10 things only a medical student can understand

 What is it about being a doctor that fascinates many students (and parents) to enter into medical school? In this fun feature we examine the life of medical student and the trade offs they experience.

1. Spent your whole life to get into medical school when you realise...

Dissatisfaction and frustration are likely to set in when you realise how tough it is to be a medical student. Excessive paperwork and uncertainty about changes all add up.

2. Thinking about food during anatomy sessions

Casually comparing a human heart to a mango or discussing what to have for lunch later while opening a cadaver.

3. Feeling left behind by your high school peers

Your close buddies have already graduated university and are now starting their own respective careers while you're still stuck living with your parents.

4. Dreadful night shifts

Doctors have now too much coffee in their blood streams since most of them are not getting the sleep they need to function at their best and night shift schedules are contributing to their inadequate sleep. Worse, you might've missed out at least one important event (birthday, reunions, etc.) 'cause you were on duty.

5. Too much technical terms and codes to learn and memorise

In medical school, you'll learn many codes such as Code blue, NPO, ABCDE and so forth as well as the meaning of different prefixes such as adnexa, adreno, cephal, and all the body parts that end with -ectomy.

6. All those Medical TV shows are a bunch of lies!

Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy, Miami Medical, Private Practice and the rest of the medical television shows are based on lies. They don't show you the real score of how it's like to be a health practitioner.

7. You're an intern? Are you sure you know how to handle that needle, properly?

Need we explain more?

8. Never-ending ward rounds

Shadowing: doing nothing and floating around after doctors whilst they act like you’re not there. The doctor would introduce us to a patient, we would chat politely and ask questions and later, in private, he would quiz us on what we knew with pointed questions.

9. All those years in medical school and no job waiting for you

According to a report from Asia News Network (ANN), new housemen in Malaysia tend to quit due to the long wait (month up to one year) before being officially appointed, especially for hospitals in Kuala Lumpur.

10. You’ve witnessed the miracle of childbirth firsthand