Does the Medical Profession Glorify Misery?

The Short Coat: An Inside Look at Getting Into and Getting Through Medical School

[This episode is sponsored by Beginly Health. The Beginly platform matches physicians and APPs with employers with complete anonymity until you’re ready for the next step. Dave and Beginly founder Kristi Olsen chat about what residents should be asking employers about when planning for their post-residency gigs and beyond.]

Do everything you can to avoid the misery trap

On this episode we welcome guest Dr. Joshua Trebach, an emergency medicine physician here at Iowa. This past spring he posted on X that medicine must “lose the mentality of thinking its okay to be miserable for years (or decades) to justify it being ‘finally worth it’ in the end.”

We couldn’t agree more–live now, not later! Which is why PA2 Julie Vuong, M2 Fallon Jung, and MD/PhD student Madi Wahlen are each finding ways to reject that mentality. Indeed, medical education is changing, perhaps slowly, to reinforce the idea that just because medicine can be a difficult life doesn’t mean that you should obsessively look forward to the day it gets better. That day is a long way away, so do what you can (what you must) to be who you want to be even as you’re drinking from the firehose.

Also, we answer one of listener Mohamed’s questions on how he can jump right into his first year this fall with his eyes on patient advocacy.

my two cents: lose the mentality of thinking its okay to be miserable for years (or decades) to justify it being "finally worth it" in the end
i know too many people that graduated from med school only to be like "wait…this sucks"
find ways to have fulfillment each day https://t.co/9OPZ2VsLyd

— Josh Trebach, MD (@jtrebach) February 10, 2024

We Want to Hear From You: YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

We welcome your feedback, listener questions, and shower thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with something we said today? Did you hear something really helpful? Can we answer a question for you? Are we delivering a podcast you want to keep listening to? Let us know at https://theshortcoat.com/tellus and we’ll put your message in a future episode. Or email [e-mail].

We want to know more about you: Take the Listener Survey

We do more things on…

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshortcoat
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theshortcoat

You deserve to be happy and healthy. If you’re struggling with racism, harassment, hate, your mental health, or some other crisis, visit http://theshortcoat.com/help, and send additions to the resources there to [e-mail]. We love you. Music provided by Argofox. License: bit.ly/CCAttribution
DOCTOR VOX – Heatstroke: youtu.be/j1n1zlxzyRE
Catmosphere – Candy-Coloured Sky: youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8
Hexalyte – Wandering Hours: youtu.be/FOAo2zsYnvA