Wayfaring MD: Missionary Physician

Ooh, I have no idea about Australia, sorry. I know their system is very different from the US system, but I’m sure it’s possible. Hey followers, anyone from Australia wanna take a stab at this question?

Congrats on getting in!

Family in Poland, huh? Sounds like you’ll be getting to know them a little better now.

Sorry, let me just take a moment to chuckle at “8 months a year”. I don’t know, maybe things are different in Poland, but in America, med school is year-round (well, I got 6 weeks off after first year, but after that, nada). No more summers like in college. Get used to it. 

I am close-ish with my family. Well, my mom and grandparents. I hardly ever talk to my crap-ton of siblings. I’m extremely independent, so I don’t have to be all up in their business all the time, and I don’t really miss them (yeesh, that sounded cold) because I try to get very involved in whatever city I’m living in. However, I talk to my mom on the phone almost daily, and to my grandparents 1-2 times a week. Nothing lengthy, though. Just little updates. 

I got to the point where I had made my own little family of med school and church friends, and I felt just as bad about not seeing them sometimes as I did about not seeing family. 

My medical school (and undergrad) was about 2 1/2 hours from my hometown. In undergrad I started out going home every 2-3 weeks, and it gradually lengthened to every 6 weeks or so. In med school it stretched even further, to every 8-10 weeks, and my visits home were shorter. And now that I’m about to start residency, it’ll get even longer between visits because I now live a 6 hour drive from home and, well, residency doesn’t allow for many breaks. So I’m going to have to make my few breaks really count. 

Yeah, medical school sort of runs your life. Residency is worse, I’ve heard. Any time I went home during medical school (except 4th year), I had to study while I was there, which was near impossible, or I had to get ahead on my studying so I wouldn’t feel guilty for taking a day off. And don’t forget that once you start this whole med school process, it leads to residency, which likely will not be in your hometown, either. 

But being overseas doesn’t mean you have to cut off contact.

Get webcams for your family and have regularly scheduled Skype chats or something. Seeing people’s faces is better than phone or e-mail conversations. 

Separating from your family is not a bad thing. It’s important to learn how to be independent and function separate from your family.   If you do end up going to Poland, it will probably be very hard at first being so far from home, but in the end you will be a stronger person for it. It’s a little tougher to learn how to depend on yourself when mommy and daddy are close by, you know what I’m saying? You will learn a lot from being away from home. 

Well, I don’t have a lot of contact with lab folks. In the hospital where I did my clerkship rotations, the lab was hidden in the bowels of the hospital. We never saw the lab people (actually, I suspect the lab was staffed with house elves, not people). 

I guess the main thing we want from the lab is prompt results. Our lab had no understanding of the concept STAT. 

Unfortunately, I can’t speak for Gray’s Anatomy, because I’ve never watched it (I know, I know). But if it’s anything like every other medical show out there, it’s only loosely based on reality. 

Yes, medical cases like the ones on House do happen in real life, but they are not nearly as dramatic. People don’t get diagnosed and treated for major illness in the span of an hour (usually), and no doctor does everything like House and his team do. I mean, on House, the team is in the lab examining slides and doing their own blood work and such, whereas in real life you would be sitting at a computer hitting “refresh” until the lab results popped up, much like you do when Tumblr is down.

And of course, the illegal shenanigans that take place on House and Scrubs —breaking & entering, switching patient charts, HIPAA violations, doctors working while impaired, etc—get you much more than a slap on the wrist in real life. 

I wish a lot of that stuff was real. Real life goes at a much slower, often more frustrating pace. But I assure you, real life medicine is just as interesting and fun and rewarding as tv medicine (and probably more so).  

For more reasons why tv medicine is different than real medicine, check out these posts.

As for your last question, please know that real life doctors (and people in general) don’t look like they do on TV. But hey, after a 30 hour call when my hair and face have enough oil to run a diesel truck and I smell like C. diff and gangrene, I always feel like 

Many hospitals have rules that employees with tattoos must keep them covered, but that’s pretty much it. I have no problem with tattoos, but for professionalism’s sake it’s probably best to keep them covered during interviews and such. 

Basically, just say no to face tattoos.

For more about tattoos, check here.