Hey,
I'm still a med student so I've left some of your questions for the doctors to answer. But here are some of my general thoughts and opinions:
Whilst I've never experienced it, I'm sure that being a junior doctor is very stressful and tiring a lot of the time, however, I also think that many doctors (even more senior ones) who say they'd rather be doing other jobs aren't being wholly frank with themselves.
Because I am a graduate medical student, I know what it's like to study another course and do other jobs...and whilst "other jobs" have less stress or hours compared to medicine, they have other drawbacks too! Not feeling like you're making a difference, repetitiveness, not producing results, endless deadlines, failed grant applications...frankly all jobs are a bit **** at times. Expecting perfection from your job is a mistake, it's a job, it's not supposed to be an antidote to unhappiness!
I'm not saying that being a junior doctor is therefore "easy", but I am saying that doctors are humans and all humans occasionally think the grass is greener on the other side, even though it actually isn't
Oh, don't worry about that, I shadowed an ENT surgeon when I was 18 and he and the anaesthetist also pitched a lot of questions at me...the majority of which I actually
did know the answer to, but in the heat of the moment I somehow lost the connection between my brain and my mouth so instead I blurted out random wrong answers. Repeatedly.
Freezing up or becoming temporarily stupid (like me
) is something that happens to everyone: pre-freshers, med students, junior doctors etc...don't feel down about that. Being a good med student is not about knowing all the answers, it's about being hard-working and willing to learn imho.
Well, medical school teaches you the basics and the rest you eventually pick up through practical experience and further study. And yes, you are under the guidance of seniors, so it's not like you're totally unsupervised.
You can't expect to know what you'll be like as a junior doctor. But you should know that the vast majority of medical students finish medical school and become perfectly competent and able doctors. That should tell you something
To be honest with you, you can't ever truly know what anything is like until you've experienced it. But if you go into it with good faith, and having done all the necessary research then no one could ask any more of you. Which is what you're doing right now: by asking questions, doing work experience, etc, you're confirming whether or not you would be suited to being a doctor. You can't be wholly certain of that, but nobody genuinely knows what it's like to be a doctor until they are one!
If you can see yourself as a doctor and the job appeals to you, then I'd say go for it. You can't ever expect absolute certainty from anything (jobs, relationships, whatever!)