Dropping out of medicine is a huge decision not to be taken lightly. You want to make sure you are choosing the right path for yourself. In this post I address crucial factors to consider before dropping out.
Only you can make the decision to drop out for yourself. This post isn’t meant to tell you what to do but hopefully it will help guide your decision making process.
What To Do Before Dropping Out
- If you’re thinking of dropping out due to financial reasons please seek support before deciding to leave your course. Your college or government might provide you with financial support. Make sure you’ve explored all options before dropping out.
- Maybe you’ve been performing poorly in exams and haven’t found your feet when it comes to study. If this is the case you don’t have to jump straight to ‘i should drop out!’ It takes a while to adjust to medical school and everyone does so at their own pace. There’s lots of helpful youtube channels and websites online that make studying easier in medical school. Here are the study resources that I find helpful. You can also check out my study tips here!
- Speak to a career guidance counsellor.
- Speak to a mental health professional.
- Try to take other people’s opinions (family, friends etc) out of the picture and do what feels right for you.
- Do some work experience in other fields that interest you. This will help you determine whether you actually prefer them to medicine or if it’s more of a ‘grass is greener on the other side’ situation.
Things to Consider before Dropping Out
Burnout
You may be feeling disinterested, anxious or even resentful towards medicine. These feelings could be a sign that medicine isn’t for you OR they could be a result of burn out. Medicine is extremely demanding with higher levels of burnout than other courses. Burnout depletes your energy and your interest in what you used to enjoy (medicine). Of course you can be burnt out and in the wrong course. However, if you are going through a period of burnout you might want to give yourself time to recover before making any drastic decisions.
Mental Health
Although we are training to look after other people’s health, looking after our own health is always the top priority. If you are struggling (no matter how big or small) it is important to take care of yourself and seek support. College counsellors, medical professionals, family and friends are all people who can offer support. You should never have to suffer alone. If you’re deciding to dropout for mental health reasons it is important to determine whether your poor mental health is due to your course or other reasons. Would leaving medicine really help you in the long run?
If you need to take a break from medicine to restore your mental health then your college should be able to accommodate this.
Your Reasons for Choosing Medicine
When pondering whether to leave medicine it is important to remind yourself why your started in the first place. Bringing yourself back to what motivated you to get into medical school may be enough to reassure you that you’re on the right track and empower you to continue. On the other hand you may be realising that you chose medicine for the wrong reasons – maybe you had unrealistic expectations of the field, or did you do it to please others rather than yourself?
You can read my post on the right and wrong reasons for choosing medicine here!
If Not Medicine, Then What?
Can you see yourself happy and fulfilled living a life without medicine? Do you believe this enjoyment and fulfilment will last into the future? If medicine is getting in the way of other big dreams that you genuinely want for your future then you may want to explore these options further. However, if you can’t see yourself enjoying a life doing anything other than medicine then you might want to think again before dropping out. The last thing you want is to drop out of medicine only to find yourself feeling lost with no plan, no career path, nothing to do except lie in bed scrolling on social media having an existential crisis.
How Far into the Course have you got?
I’d never tell anyone to continue a doomed project just because they’ve already started. However, if you’re in your final year of medicine you may as well push through and finish your degree. A medical degree will be worth so much to you whether you choose a career in medicine or not. Your medical degree will open so many doors to you outside of medicine and you will be so grateful to your past self for finishing the course no matter what path in life you choose. On the other hand, if you’re at the beginning of your studies and already seriously thinking of dropping out, there’s no point in trudging through years of suffering just to have MD after your name. No matter what stage of the course you’re at, if you don’t feel you’re mentally able to cope with more medicine then don’t force yourself to continue. Seek help, ask for a break, do what meets your needs at this time.
Final Point
There are so many different specialties and subspecialties in medicine and each one is completely different with different lifestyles, different levels of patient interaction, different demands, attracting different types of medical students. Just because you hate the thought of surgery doesn’t mean you’ll be miserable in any medical career. Surgery, GP, internal medicine, obgyn, paediatrics, sports med, psychiatry, public health etc there are so many completely different career paths within medicine.
Furthermore, a medical degree can open you to knew opportunities outside of traditional medicine. You could go into management/research/education in medicine or branch out and do something utterly unrelated to medicine. The knowledge and skills you gain in medical school will stand to you in your career and everyday life. No matter what, these years will not have been a waste.
