I have thought a lot about my FNE

I have thought a lot about my FNE. When I was young I loved to write stories and even adapted a play my class put on in 6th grade and I had visions of being a writer but even then the television shows I always watched and the stories that most fascinated me were about medicine, and that is why I chose it as a career. I had great visions of helping people and making a difference. Over the years I have become disillusioned because I realize more and more that the essence of medicine is not caring and helping but making money. I’m not naive enough to not realize that you have to make money in order to keep a business going, but it still seems liking caring for people as an individual should be more important. We are paid by production (how many patients we can see rapidly) rather than what their outcome is and how to help them best as an individual. I have a lot of difficulty balancing this in mind because I really need the money and I’m also competitive and I want to feel that I am doing as a good a job as others. This is a source of great frustration for me and probably what makes me not happy doing medicine. Medicine is also disillusioning to me because you realize how very little you can really do. Every surgery has some downside to whatever the benefit was whether it is that something just doesn’t work as as well or a scar. Medicines all have side effects. Patients want to live until they are a 100 in perfect health but yet smoke, eat all they want to and become obese, live stressful lives, and not exercise. They want a little pill they can take to make it all better and I know that is not possible. I also get frustrated because I have to work so much that my family has been neglected and I don’t how to make up for problems in the past and solutions of the future without continuing to neglect them because of lack of time. I probably sound like I’m rambling but in looking at your discussion, I’m seeing why I’m frustrated and unhappy rather than just having it a vague feeling. I’m hoping that I can learn to integrate so that I can find a better solution for now as well as the future.