From Medical School to Middle Age

This could be an interesting show. No matter what our professions, we all wonder at some point if we would recommend the same to our children. My view is that it is much easier and gratifying to be a teacher, engineer, doctor etc. in areas of great need and where warmth, respect, and civility are hallmarks of society.
When one of my sons was 6 years old, I told him that if at that age God had "told" me that when I grow up I was going to help blind people see, I would have been flabbergasted...
Uvealblues


Tonight and next Tuesday, PBS shines the retrospectoscope on doctors as “Nova” airs “Doctors’ Diaries,” the most recent installment of a 22-year chronicle about seven former Harvard medical school students.
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These last views offered by the retrospectoscope are tinged with sadness, the kind of regret that inevitably comes with nearly 20/20 hindsight. Each doctor goes on to address the question: Would you do it over again? And it’s uncomfortable watching these once voluble or spontaneous young students now pause and offer the measured responses of middle age.

But what leaves the viewer, and any future doctor who might watch the series, with hope is the surprising lack of regret each expresses regarding his or her choice to become a doctor. Their work today reflects a broad range of deeply committed and patient-centered work — caring for the underserved; doing clinical and basic science research that will ultimately affect patients’ lives; traveling to Third World countries to offer care; running a nonprofit that helps to fund community service projects here and abroad. It is work that transcends the challenges of their personal lives and far surpasses the quality of what they might have ever offered patients earlier on in their careers.

There is a discussion at the nytimes on this subject here.