Why Medicine?

Saw a similar thread about law. Why do people want to do medicine?

There's nothing wrong with 3 sciences and maths. Medicine is perfect for some as it combines the intellectual challenge of science with emotional rewards. I'm surprised people lacking people skills managed to get in though.

There's nothing wrong with 3 sciences and maths. Medicine is perfect for some as it combines the intellectual challenge of science with emotional rewards. I'm surprised people lacking people skills managed to get in though.

but what would you tell a admissions tutor at an interview if he/she asked you "why this course (medicine)?"

Your reply should be personal rather than regurgitating other people's ideas because everyone has their own different reasons. Perhaps you realised your aspiration to become a doctor when you did voluntary work or maybe when you saw a particular case during your work experience. You've really just got to think to yourself why you want to do medicine not why other people want to do it. Nevertheless the generic answers are normally:

1) the love of both science and people
2) through experiencing the medical profession usually through the illness of family/friends
3) the process of elimination - something along the lines of how you've always liked science but didn't want to go into research because of XYZ...

Good money and high standing career? Nearly all the people i know who have gone to med school, 5 from my school are the 5 *most lacking in people skills* people ever, they were just science nerds hence 3 sciences and maths! God help the people they have to treat. Morons.

haha i nkow what you mean.. imagine them telling you youve got cancer.. medicine often seems to attract overly clever people who are academic and thats it and see getting into medicine as the hardest thing you can do and therefore choose it on that basis alone

don't you suppose that research is an integral part of medicine?

Of course it is but on comparison becoming a doctor is hugely different to going into a profession of pure research.

Do you think that practicing physicians do not have the temperament of pure research? I seem to know a couple of doctors who incorporate both of them in their professional life and are successful in both! I believe a doctor is someone who is keen on the human body and mind, and therefore has the knowledge and the ability to deal with it. Research is therefore an indispensable part of it and a doctor has to do some in order to understand their speciality in it entirety.