Is anyone else in total awe of medical students and doctors?

It's true. Many are. Took me five different doctors before ONE managed to work out I had gallstones. Not exactly medical mystery of the century.

Veterinary is more competitive!

Veterinary is more competitive!
And vets have to do what doctors do, but for masses of different species.
Real doctors treat more than one species, just saying...

Veterinary is more competitive!
And vets have to do what doctors do, but for masses of different species.
Real doctors treat more than one species, just saying...

Yeah when I see a med student I'm so in awe I don't know whether to fap over their godliness or just bow down at their feet.

IMO, the people that I have met that want to go for medicine are only doing it because they can. They get a few A*s at GCSE think they're Gods gift thus thinking 'O wait i got A*s, i can do medicine, let's do that'. TBH the more of these people that go to do medicine the better. Meaning there's less people doing my course in the uk so there's less competition for future jobs.

basically I don't think people do enough research when choosing medicine. Their problem.

Yeah but there's arguably higher levels of stress and responsibility involved with being a doctor. If you're a vet and an animal dies...well it's bad and you'll get a lot of negativity from the owners and might possibly get sued.

But if you're a doctor and your patient dies due to your mistake? Biiiiiiiiiiig problems...lawsuits galore

But there are a lot of staff who take care of the well-being of a patient. All the blame won't fall on a doctor. A doctor is a human who is liable to make mistakes, they won't be stripped from their medical licence is their intention was to do the best they can. However if the mistake was due to pure negligence, big problems.

True but human life is valued more than animal life, no? At least mostly in this society. It's more distressing to know that you've let a human die due to your negligence as opposed to an animal.

I'm a medical student and I don't undertand AT ALL why people have this view of medicine. First of all, yes, it is competitive to get in but so are a lot of subjects. Concerning the exams and the course in gerenal. Yes, it is a lot of work but if you have a certain level of intelligence and if you know how to select what is actually important it is more than managable. It is definitely not more challenging than natural sciences, economics or other degrees.

Now speaking of the "awe" you have for medical students and doctors, this is absolutely ridiculous. It is good to respect their work, but then again you should respect most peoples work as long as they do it well and enjoy it. Doctors are by no mean all selfless and hard working, in fact, a lot of them corrupt in the strict hospital hierarchy.

The reason why most people think it is so prestigious is that you can safely say that you will find a job, you get a fair salary and it is a lot of work. However your salary is pretty much capped and if you want to get rich, medicine is not the right choice for you..

Despite how much medical students belittle their achievements themselves, it is a great feat to graduate as a doctor having completed your medical degree and to do your job well. Sure some degrees themselves may be harder to do than medicine, but to be brutally honest, you can be a neek and still excel at mathematics at oxford - whereas medicine demands the complete package: the brains to not only get through five years of the course, but to actually be of any use as a doctor, the people skills to actually be able to do your day to day job with any success, the strict organisational and time pressure skills to be able to complete a hundred and one jobs by prioritising them while you get another hundred and one thrown onto you, and the deadlines here aren't about lost productivity or lost money, but rather people's health and even their lives. Then there's also the ability to try and make sure the thing that you've dreamt about your whole life doesn't burn you out and destroy you completely, by actually trying to have a modicum of a normal working life along side your medical career. And the balls to actually be able to deal with some really really sick people in some really really **** circumstances for what often seems like little to no appreciation and the constant threat of litigation if you screw up. And it goes on, but I do wonder how many of your average 23 year old uni graduates could hack the degree and then the career that follows. Medicine requires a particular type of person and even the current system lets through a heck of a lot of people who just aren't good enough for the job. As for anyone who says the degree isn't that hard - you're doing it wrong. There is so much to potentially learn, not just from a book but in real life, from real people and their real life stories.