The life of someone going into the medical field is fun, exciting, exhausting— and oh-so-rewarding. However, everyone's favorite TV drama, "Grey's Anatomy" romanticizes the entire medical experience to a point that it is pretty inaccurate.
After a year of living the pre-med life with seven more to go before I can officially be called "Doctor," I can say definitively that "Grey's" has spent a decade and a half lying to us. Here are 13 ways that the pre-med life is nothing like "Grey's Anatomy."
1. There's no steamy romance in on-call rooms
Between all the classes, volunteer hours, extracurriculars, and studying for the MCAT, who has time to be hooking up with colleagues while on the clock? Not me, that's for sure.
2. Trauma is way less exciting in real life
It's not every day (unfortunately) that a ferry boat crashes, or a lion is loose in the city, or someone gets impaled by a pole.
3. The people in this field are professionals
Cutting LVAD wires, dancing in your underwear, and falling in love with patients would never fly in a real-life clinical setting (no matter how good the drama is).
4. The emotions really do get to you
While we all wish we could be tough like Cristina Yang all the time, there are many times in this field that you just feel the need to break down.
5. It's so much work to get where you want to be
"Grey's" skips past all that fun chemistry and calculus and goes straight to the part where you're a successful doctor. If only real life was more like that.
6. You'll mess up way more than you're willing to admit
This is why we train so hard: so we can work out all the mistakes before someone's life is on the line.
7. The exhaustion is its own demon
It's a little ironic that the people who can treat sleep deprivation are the ones who are the most sleep deprived.
8. Not everyone is related or romantically involved
In "Grey's", it seems like every time you turn around there are random connections between the characters and everyone's either related or sleeping together (remember the syphilis outbreak? That's how we get a syphilis outbreak).
9. CPR looks way different in real life
CPR goes on for a lot longer than it looks in the show and, most of the time, it doesn't have a happy ending. And when a patient codes, everything possible is done for them, they're not just declared dead.
10. Surgeons don't just hang out in the ED
In a hospital, every single person has has a distinct job to be done in order to make the medical team operate like a well-oiled machine. Surgeons do surgery, and emergency physicians meet ambulances and stitch up wounds in the ED.
11. The hot doctors are few and far between
When you're watching "Grey's" it's easy to forget that doctors are real people, too, not just eye candy. While we'd all love our own Derek Shepherd, Mark Sloan, Alex Karev, or Jackson Avery, that's unfortunately just not the reality.
12. Balancing work and life is so much harder than it looks
The doctors' kids make brief appearances when the story line is convenient but, other than that, they're not really in the picture. Who takes care of them? Do they ever see their parents? If only kids just appeared when they fit into your life and then disappeared when they don't.
13. Every single day, it's worth it
There's a reason we choose to enter this field. We know that, regardless of the bad outcomes and hard work, every day, the job we choose to do is worth it. And we can't imagine doing anything else.
