Deborah Shelkan Remis: “So here I am. We’ve flipped our calendars to March, and match is but three weeks away and I will learn my fate for the next three years. My youngest daughter, a senior in high school and applying to college, and I are playing the waiting game; round and round we go, where we land no one yet knows.
Uncertainty rules our lives. Will my husband be the sole empty-nester as I travel away from home for a residency? Will we share this experience together?”
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{ 7 comments }
I’m skeptical of these older doctors. They have far less time to be of use out in the world — surely her slot in med school would have been better served with a younger candidate with more years to practice ahead of them? Particularly in the light of the physician shortage?
After residency (~4 years) she’ll have what… 10-11 years left to practice before she retires compared to 30 for a traditional applicant?
What a waste. These admissions committees need their heads examined.
After some more digging, it seems that she went to Medical University of the Americas, located in the West Indies (but with a graduation ceremony in Worcester, MA). Most Caribbean med schools are for-profit, which may influence which candidates they accept.
More fodder for thought.
“Uncertainty rules our lives. Will my husband be the sole empty-nester as I travel away from home for a residency? Will we share this experience together? In the end, the power of the computer will deliver the answers for all of us. My girlfriend will receive responses on the Internet for a date, while I will find my match for the next three years.”
She must have some husband to put up with all this while raising a teenage daughter who is now entering college. It sounds like she is a perpetual student. If this were my wife Match.com would be the only match she would be involved with.
On the one hand we want to believe that its never too late to follow a dream, but I too am skeptical of these over-40 medical students. Its not about what’s best for you (i.e. achieving your dream) in medicine but rather what is best for patients and the health of society at large. There are scarce number of seats in U.S. med schools, and a finite number of residency slots. A lot of time and money (much of it the government’s) goes into training a physician with the expectation that the investment will be returned to society tenfold. When someone who realistically has ten years in them to practice takes the spot from an equally qualified person with thirty or more years to give, are they really a wise investment?
My own mother left nursing entered med school at 32 and began practice as an FP at 39. She fully intends to put in 30 years still. I really do agree, reluctantly, that people over 35 or so have no business in med school. In the context of what’s good for society, its a selfish move.
I am not so sure to rule out the older students. The oldest graduate in my medical school class was 43 years old. The youngest was 25. Most were about 27-28, like me. Twenty years later, at least one is dead, and he was not the oldest. Several have left practice to raise families or pursue other interests. Among the residents I trained with where I did my fellowship, at least one has retired, not even ten years into her career (and she was a good eye surgeon.) She isn’t even 40.
Careers are not altogether predictable. People change their minds, become ill or disabled, even die. Some burn out and do something else. Age is just not that big a predictor of how productive a graduate will become. That oldest classmate of mine had a prior military career and returned to military service as a physician, something he looked forward to, and will probably contribute significantly to the welfare of his patients. Was his training wasted? I don’t think so, and neither did the service who sponsored his education.
Calling the decision to go to medical school later in life “selfish” is just blind and stupid. It presumes that the age of the applicant should matter more than the quality of the applicant, as if the choice of candidates was supposed to be an actuarial exercise where “society” is somehow supposed to be the beneficiary of doctors in longer careers. That’s bunk. The medical students themselves are bearing the expense of their education in time and treasure and I do not agree that it is the business of “society” to say who should not be allowed to seek that education. Who cares how many seats are available in medical schools? Doctors don’t owe anyone or society as a whole any longevity of service.
If the better applicant is an older applicant and is just as willing, so be it.
“Society at large” be damned. What is this? A fascist state? It is her tuition money and her time. She doesn’t belong to “society” and the medical school that she went to is also a private entity, not a creation of or servant of the state.
By that logic, once people graduate, the “society” can tell them where to work and how many hours–and prohibit them from changing careers.
If physicians were to accept the logic that “society at large” is more important than personal interest and freedom for themselves, it is a very short leap for them to accept that same logic for their patients. When that happens, I pity the crippled, the elderly, and the mentally ill, for Germany in the 1930’s shows what doctors do to them once they accept the supremacy of the good of “society at large” over the individual.
The foregoing comments were apparently written by people under forty (or thirty). The contributions to be made by new physicians over 40 are at least as important as those made by the younger docs. Typically, older medical students have a level of life experience that just is not present for the younger set. Most of these kids have not been married, had kids nor had a ‘real’ job. I am a 40 something med student and I can see that my 20 something classmates are seriously in need of some real world experience and common sense. So, you guys need to get with the program because us ‘granny’ med students and residents are NOT going away. We will be your colleagues so be careful what you say and whom you say it to. It may come back to haunt you when I am your doctor, still practicing good medicine well into my sixties and seventies……..
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