July 12th, 2023
2
Should you know anatomy in elementary school if you want to be a doctor?
I have been at the hospital for an exploded kneecap and have gotten close to some of the staff. Today I (rising high school senior) expressed my interest in going into medicine to the doctor and she smiled in a kind of condescending way and started quizzing me with the anatomy chart on the wall. I couldn’t name anything besides miniscus (having your shattered one removed days prior kinda makes it stick in your memory lol) and the small intestine. She laughed and said that anyone most people who wanted to be a doctor already know the entire human anatomy by age 10 and so I was almost a decade behind. Later the nurse who feeds me jello and massages my knee called me “Doctor Wishbone” and laughed and then the janitor sprayed me with water and wiped my forehead— I asked him wtf he was doing and he said he was “washing away the ambition.” So I think the doctor is telling everyone?
I am really confused and feel like I am being pranked. I’ve never heard that about anatomy knowledge. And I’m not sure why the staff would be acting like this. I’m about to go into pre op i think so I have to leave it there, but am I actually screwed?
July 12th, 2023
2
Comments:
amorembalming
Yeah. Pretty much. You are approaching 20 by the sounds of it? I’m in England, so our route into medicine is similar to the Americans, but requires college qualifications in at least Biology, Chemistry and Maths at the highest passing grade, then acceptance into a med school for around 5 years, but can be 7 in the end, doing what is considered by many to be the most difficult degree there is, earning next to nothing. The passion to endure this is borne from a want to do this early on, to tailor one’s studies from about 10 years old to get ahead of the pack. I have a masters degree in human anatomy (I work in pathology but not a pathologist) which is a hefty degree but not a scratch on medicine, and without the years of being a child obsessing over text books I wouldn’t have made it through. All my cohorts would agree. The entire anatomy chart and you could name two things? How would you get on learning MOA of a lymphocyte or basic diagnosis, or absolutely any grounding in the sciences at all? What are your college degrees in? Can you support yourself for the next 8 years? Do you have the capacity to do this?
They are absolutely wrong to take the piss out of you like that, no doubt, but if you were serious about this you would have been telling everyone about it as a child and you’d be in your first year now.
Not something you get into on a whim.
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LuciusDickusMaximus
Well more than any comment you have inspired me. I’ll be coming back to this thread in 6 years and you’ll be calling me doctor. 🖕
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[deleted]
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UnderArmAussie
My son knows my job and asked aged 5 for bedtime stories to be the working of the brain, the circulatory system, and such like. He's not the slightest bit interested in medicine.
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UnderArmAussie
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LuciusDickusMaximus
Thank you 🙏🙏🙏
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