10 Positive Aspects of Being A Doctor

What are the positive aspects of being a doctor anyway?  

We all know about the long hours of studying, the numerous tests, and long training required to be a doctor. But what are the good parts?

Well, I promise you that there are many amazing positive aspects of being a doctor.

In fact, I’ve found 10 amazing pros of being a care provider! We’ll go over each of them in this post!

Note: Want the ultimate bundle to be a happy and successful med student? Check out our awesome sales bundle here. 

1. Opportunity To Help Other People 

A lot of us say that we want to go into medicine to help people. But we don’t really know what that means until we actually have a role in their personal health care.

When you take care of your patients in medical school, you’re going to quickly realize that you can make small differences that are going to make big impacts on their lives.

This can be anything from suggesting medication change for your patient to your supervisor or just making the discharge process easier for them and their family.

And as you go from medical school to residency and to becoming an attending physician, your roles in the lives of the patients get larger.

You not only become in charge of their medication but you start to look after their entire health situation.

Everything that you can do to help your patient understand and care for their body better is an opportunity for you to help and make a difference in the lives of these people.

The opportunity to help people in this profession is endless.

You are literally giving life-changing, life-saving advice and tips to your patients which can help not only themselves but their loved ones as well.

Thus this has to be one of the most attractive positive aspects of being a doctor.

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2. Financial Stability and Job Security

It is no secret that doctors in the United States make a very good salary. The typical salary of a doctor as of 2019 is about $200,000 to $250,000  yearly depending on specialties.

Specialties that are more procedural based, like surgery or Interventional Radiology will make more compared to other specialties that are more clinic based.

But still, regardless of the salary you make, you’re going to be able to have a very nice lifestyle for yourself and your family.

Now going into medicine just for the money is not a good enough reason simply because there are plenty of other career options that you can do which are quicker, easier and make more money than you will as a doctor.

However, having that blanket of security regarding your finances is going to make the process of helping others and studying for so many years much easier.

In addition – here’s another as a positive aspect of being a doctor – you don’t have to worry about whether you’ll find a job.

There are always jobs for doctors regardless of what specialty you’re in. Thus you don’t really have to worry about whether you can pay for your bills,  as long as you have a modest lifestyle.

3. Gaining Respect in the Society

Being a doctor is at the pinnacle of society when it comes to professions.

We are looked at as caretakers and as healers by most people. We’re looked at as individuals who are intelligent and society puts a lot of weight and trust in us.

When you are a doctor, you’re going to feel that trust, the gratitude, the compassion, and respect from the people you meet. You’re going to feel society looking at you as somebody they can turn to.

One of the coolest things about being a doctor that I’ve realized on my journey is having complete strangers put 100 percent of their trust in me because of the white coat I had on.

This immediate trust is one of the positive aspects of being a doctor.

So just knowing that we’re going into a profession where people trust our knowledge and hard work is truly inspiring.

Realizing that our patients and their loved ones are willing to put their time, effort, sweat, tears and total trust to us is very humbling.

4. Flexibility

In medicine, we are not trapped in a cubicle. We don’t have an 8-5 kind of work.

Your career can turn into anything you want.

Being a doctor is a very umbrella term and there are a lot which goes under it. You can be a doctor for kids, a surgeon, a heart doctor, and basically any specialty that you want.

You can help give birth to new life by being an ObGyn. Or you can support someone at the end of their life by going into palliative care.

There are so many directions to go to when you are a doctor.

And the best thing is -you have almost two decades to decide on the direction that you will be heading to. After two entire decades of studying, you don’t decide on a specialty until much later.

In addition,  another positive aspect of being a doctor is that even within a specific specialty, you still have more options.

For example, you can be a cardiologist who does procedures or one who only does consultations.

And finally, you can make changes.

You can shift from within a specialty if you’re unhappy with your current style of practice… You can be practicing in a clinic for 10 years and then, suddenly decide to get into the Intensive Care Unit.

5. Continued Personal and Career Growth

Medicine is often synonymous with lifelong learning. You literally never truly understand all of medicine even after decades and decades of medicine.

You just get better with repetition.

The things that I learned as a first-year med student are still a blur and some of it is still confusing. There is just a lot more information that I’m better at now because I’ve seen it hundreds of times.

So another positive aspect of being a doctor is that you get the opportunity to learn more and more each day, month or year. And as for me, that has been one of the most attractive parts of my journey and training as a doctor.

I’m not expected to know the materials 100 percent at the end of the four years of med school. It is through daily experiences and learning that you get better. The career allows you to grow with it.

Additionally, it is not just a career growth but also personal growth.

As you get to know more patients, more people from different aspects of life, you get more compassionate and become a better communicator.

As a doctor, some of the most important skills that you have to develop involve communication and emotional intelligence. Those are things that stay with you not just in your career but in your personal life as well.

Personally, I feel like after four years of studying medicine I have been a more patient individual, not just in my career but also in my personal life. And that’s just something I developed for four years.

Imagine the amount of growth you can experience after years of practicing medicine.

6. Better Understanding Of Your Own Health

One of the other positive aspects of being a doctor is simply being able to understand your own body.

It’s just like being a mechanic and owning a car – you understand the intricacies of your body (your car) better than someone else.

The beauty in this is that you become fully aware of your own body. You start to know how it works, how you should be eating and sleeping, and how you should be able to take care of it better.

The information that you use to take care of your patients are things that you can also apply to your own to take care of yourself.

I’ve learned so much about the human body such as the muscular system that helped me become more fit, eat better.

I know what I should and shouldn’t be doing.

Being a doctor gives you a very detailed understanding of how the human body works and you can use that to your advantage. You can use that to make sure that your body’s always in tip-top shape.

7. Contribute Change to the Society

We talked about being respected in society. But one positive aspect of being a doctor is that you truly change societies for the better and for the future.

One of the most common ways that doctors do this is through research.

You can be at the forefront of science and medical science, discovering new treatments and new understandings of very complicated diseases. These discoveries can help patients with that specific condition, not just for this generation but as well as the next.

You can also contribute to society by just being involved in the community and serving the very underprivileged areas, locally and in third world countries.

Some doctors will take the initiative to create programs in their local communities to provide free (or cheap) health care. These kinds of programs can causes ripples in the community, improve health, and save lives.

8. Impacting Complete Strangers

This really points to the reason why I chose to go into medicine in the first place.

I have this term that many of you might have heard from my other blog posts called the “web of influence”. This is another term for the “ripple effect”.

Note: If you want to learn more about why I went to medical school, check out this video below where I quickly breakdown my “why”.

[Please add link to “Why I Went To Medical School” video from Youtube from my channel]

You think you helped one person by taking care of them and making them feel better. But the truth is, as that person goes back to society, they serve their roles for all the other peoples in their lives as well.

It has a ripple effect. You help one person, and that person then lives on to help another person, and then that person helps another person and so on.

It creates a ripple effect of good things.

By helping that single individual, he/she can then help hundreds and thousands of other people depending on who you’re taking care of.

And in the span of your life, think about how many strangers you are going to have an impact on just by helping your patients.

This ability to affect a web of individuals is truly one of the most positive aspects of being a doctor that really attracted me.

In fact, I saw this in my own life.

My family members grew up with various illnesses and I was able to experience their care. I was able to experience their hospitalizations, their illnesses, and their medications.

But through the great care of their doctors, I was still able to have my family members around to serve their roles in my life – as a support system.

So I can clearly see how the efforts of their doctors have impacted my life even though I’ve never met their doctor personally. Think about that the next time you ask yourself why you want to go into medicine.

9. Combining Emotion and Intelligence

Being a doctor requires both emotional and mental intelligence. You have to be emotionally and mentally smart. And that is one of the positive aspects of being a doctor.

You can’t just be a smart doctor that is not emotionally intelligent because then you are just a nerd.

You will eventually be too smart for your own and your patient won’t respond to you. On the other hand, you also can’t be just an empathetic doctor.

Empathy is good, however, if you don’t have enough knowledge on how to treat your patients, it wouldn’t make a difference to their situation and it wouldn’t help them at all.

Therefore, you have to be both.

And that’s one of my favorite parts of being a doctor, combining not only what I’ve learned, but also understanding how to interact with individuals and people of all sizes and colors to really get them back to 100% health.

On a side note, if you want to learn how to study better as a student, check out my free Ultimate Guide on How To Study in Medical School here. 

10. Learning the Definition of Hard Work

This is one of the positive aspects of being a doctor that is not emphasized enough.

As you go through various parts of your training, from pre-med up until specialization and further studies, your definition of hard work changes with your situation.

Your definition of hard work when you’re a pre-med will not be the same when you’re in medical school.

As your goals differ and get bigger, you eventually have to work harder. And that’s one thing that you begin to appreciate in this career.

As you go up into your medical school and doctorate journey, you will have to work harder in every phase there is. And it’s exciting and scary at the same time.

But the beauty in that is as your goals get bigger, you work harder, and you get to see that you are actually capable of achieving more and beyond what you think you can.

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Hope you enjoyed this post about the positive aspects of being a doctor! Now go out and be inspired to continue to pursue being a care provider on your journey!

Now if you want more, check out some of the awesome posts below.

How To Study in Medical School [Ultimate Guide]

7 Reasons You’re Stressed in Medical School

5 Proven Study Methods For Medical School

MD Vs. MD PhD [Which Is Better For You?]

Also make sure you check out my premium studying course, Level Up Your Studying. In just 3 short weeks you’ll learn the strategies needed to take your grades in school to another level!

Check out Level Up Your Studying here!

Thank you for reading!

Until next time my friend…