WASHINGTON, D.C. – Citing the current uncertain health care climate and emphasizing that the “time is now,” both the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Medical Student Association (AMSA) have announced that med students have all the right tools at their disposal to drop out of medical school before it’s too late.
“Never before in the history of medicine have health care professionals, not just med students and doctors, been so open about all the downsides of being a health care professional, and it’s everywhere you look: in lectures, in journals, in social media,” said AMSA President Kelly Thibert. “Medicine has never been so lost as it is right now: the debt, the burnout, the depression, the suicides… However, I believe the current crop of medical students have an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity before them. So I implore you, all of you to do the right thing: GET OUT! ABANDON SHIP! SAVE YOURSELVES WHILE YOU STILL CAN! SERIOUSLY: GTFO!!!”
Medical students are skeptical about the joint AMA and AMSA announcement, stating this “goes against our pact to carry on with blinding optimism in the pursuit of straight A’s” and “look forward” to the path ahead and all of the “horrific twists, turns, cliffs, and sinkholes that will appear along the way.”
As third-year medical student Emily Sanger explained to Gomerblog, “We didn’t go to medical school just to become doctors; we joined so that we can experience regret in its ultimate form when we realize that this whole journey was a one huge, terrifying, and ugly mistake. I know that’s why I went.”
