 Good morning. My name is Boris. I'm a board certified physician assistant. If you're new to this channel, welcome. Thank you for watching this video and the topic of today's video is going to be is medicine boring. Now this video, like a lot of my videos, was inspired by a shower thought and that shower thought was inspired by a conversation I had with somebody I was friends with a few years ago actually. It's been a minute since this conversation happened but basically this person was really really smart, really good in school, terrific student, and just a quick aside about being a good student. Those of you who actually watch my videos consistently you know that I don't wear glasses so why am I wearing glasses? I actually do wear glasses but very very rarely it's usually like when I've been studying a lot or working a lot and my eyes are getting tired then the glasses help out a little bit. But today the reason I'm wearing glasses is totally for self-preservation because yesterday my doctor and I did an IND, an incision and drainage procedure on a big abscess and if anyone's ever done one of those or seen one of those done you know that abscesses this is really gross but abscesses tend to squirt aggressively so like you cut into it or even if you like stick the needle in there to give it anesthesia you know your lidocaine with epi just to like numb up the area before you even stick the scalpel in there sometimes even that's enough for it to start squirting at you and again this is really gross but what it squirts of course is this like bloody post material that's really disgusting and it smells and you don't want it on your clothes and you definitely don't want it in your eyes. So technically you should be wearing eye protection but sometimes you forget or you can't find it and the doctor of course he wasn't worried because he wears glasses so I was thinking all right I may not be wearing glasses all the time but I at least need to have them at the office so if there's no eye pro and we're about to do a procedure at the very least I'm ready I have something to protect my eyes so I'm not even using the glasses as they're like prescribed to be used you know to help me see I'm using them basically as uh overpriced eye protection so anyway don't know if you care about that just wanted to kind of explain to the regular viewers why I'm wearing glasses today and I usually am not anyway so this conversation that I had with my friend was when she was choosing what she was going to do this was an undergrad and like I said she was really smart she was in biology so she was doing the whole pre-med pre-health thing you know you know like every other biology major every biology major you ask wants to be a doctor and then five years later like 99% of them are doing something else because medical school is super competitive PA school is super competitive there's only so many slots and so most biology majors that start off in that direction end up doing something else so she was kind of deciding what she was going to do was she going to go all in and pursue medical school and be a doctor be a medical doctor or she was choosing between that and research like a PhD so still technically a doctor but you know not a medical doctor or researcher and for this particular person PA school nurse practitioner nursing all of those are off the table she wanted a terminal degree she wanted to be a doctor she just like got it in her head that she absolutely had to be a doctor nothing less would be okay and you know some people are like that thank god for those people I personally could never put in that many years into training because by the time I'd get out of training because I got into this whole thing kind of late I was 29 when I even got out of the navy I was 30 when I started PA school I was 32 when I finished PA school just this year so if I would have gone to med school I would have been like 40 before I had my first job and that's assuming I didn't even do surgery or anything that takes a long time to train so for me personally just the length of training alone made med school impossible for me because I don't want to start working at 40 I'd like to be like semi-retired by 40 you know so PA school was definitely the way and it wasn't just the timing it was a lot of other things I think PA is the perfect role for me but we can get into that in another video this friend of mine knew that she wanted to be a doctor she was going to go all the way in any direction whether that was research or medicine and spoiler alert she ended up choosing research she ended up not choosing to be a medical doctor and here's what she told me here's the reason why she really didn't want to do med school in the end and she wanted to do research but first let's get some coffee that's better nice cup of recessed coffee austin's blend okay I promise I'm not sponsored by recessed coffee I think I explained it in another video why I really love this particular coffee shop gonna spare you and not talk about it again but every city that I've lived in and I've lived in a bunch of different cities my first priority is finding a coffee shop that I really like one to just sit at or study at I'm no longer a student of any kind so I don't really study all that much but I do just really love the vibe I think it's because my first job ever in high school when I was 16 was at a coffee shop it was called caribou coffee in Cleveland Ohio and I just always really love that vibe like people are just happy they're getting their caffeine they're always playing good music it's just like a cozy atmosphere I just I've always loved coffee shops so that's always been my first priority whenever I get to a new city even for like a couple days is where is there a good coffee shop where can I get good coffee and if I really want to just chill go like gather my thoughts for a few hours read for a couple hours or honestly just like sit there and like people watch like that in a creepy way but you see you know what I mean just to like spend time doing something or like hang out with a friend or whatever I just always want to find a good coffee shop and the first time I was ever in Syracuse which was years ago at this point I've been kind of in and out of the city I explained why because I had an x that kind of brought me to the city and then the x moved on and you know I'm here I got into grad school here I ended up getting my first job here as I talked about so this one coffee shop that I found my first like few days here in Syracuse has just always been really special to me and I really freaking love it and you know they happen to have excellent coffee and excellent bagels but anyway okay the point I was making is my friend who is choosing between medical school and research phd programs the reason she said that she ended up not choosing medical school and not going with medicine was because she thought that medicine was boring she said that as a doctor as an md and not as a researcher she wouldn't be able to be creative she wouldn't be able to be innovative and she would essentially like learn the job and just do the same thing every day basically treat it as an algorithm these are the patient symptoms these are the complaints this is their history and that means I have to do x y and z okay move on to the next patient that's it everything is the same every day is the same like that 90 song and every day is the same I think it's um I think it was blink 182 or some 41 basically it's about like every day being the same suburban life just totally boring eats your soul so that's what she thought medicine was going to be like she thought that it's going to be every day is exactly the same every patient is the same yeah the job is like hard to learn because it's complicated it's medicine but once you learn it and once you know what you're doing everything is the same you're not being creative and that was something very important to her which was being creative she was a musician she was like a dancer you know she liked to express herself she had a big personality and so she wanted to be creative every day in her work and she thought that medicine would not allow her to do that so she ended up going with research where she thought that you know you're on the cutting edge you're doing stuff that's different every single day and you're really innovating and being creative okay and on paper I could see her perspective and from her knowledge at that time I could see why that would be why things might appear that way however from my experience now working in medicine and shadowing in medicine and doing all kinds of stuff before I even became a medical provider myself and also being a researcher working in a lab as a research assistant as a researcher myself not like phd level I did this you know at a bachelor's level but I did do research in a few different labs and I've also done medicine in a bunch of different settings and now I'm you know doing it professionally would I agree with that opinion now absolutely not but that's from my perspective because of the way that I want to practice medicine and the way that I've seen it practiced by people that I want to emulate also some people the way that they practice I might actually agree with that perspective and here's why medicine can be boring medicine can definitely be frustrating even if you love it but medicine can be boring and exactly like my friend said where everything is the same every day is the same patients are algorithms you're not creative you're just handing out pills you're doing procedures you're handing out treatment plans and there's only so many conditions you're usually going to see unless you're in some brand new field or you're like on the cutting edge or you're doing research as well as medicine you're really going to see mostly the same stuff and occasionally something rare pops up and even if something rare does pop up specialists have already developed more or less what you want to do for those people sorry all the lights just came on it's like two degrees here in Syracuse so I think that's messing with the electrical system but yeah all the lights just came on in my car and I think that means I need to call Sean the mechanic again I sort of got I'm getting a new car sorry for yet another distraction so anyway so what do I mean by it depends how you practice and medicine can be boring for some people but not for everybody so the best part about clinical year you know those eight rotations eight five to six week rotations in the second year of PA school where you've already got your knowledge base and now you're learning how to apply it and what you basically do is you do a preceptorship eight times with eight different people in different specialties and you follow them around and once you get some more experience you actually start to act like a provider yourself and like present your treatment plan and your findings through the preceptor and get more and more comfortable practicing yourself but either way you're still a student but the best part of all of that is that you get to see how people practice medicine everybody does it different there's definitely no one way to do it and people are very very different not just patients but providers so medicine means different things to everyone and everyone just has their own unique way of practicing things and if you're observant if you like to observe people like I do you can really pick up on how people do things differently how people treat people differently how people talk about things differently how people just practice medicine differently and based on your opinion you can figure out okay I want to practice like this person does or I definitely don't want to practice like this person does I like this person's attitude I really don't like this person's attitude and you can just kind of pick and choose for your own practice how you're going to be and one thing that I noticed is that the providers whether they were a doctor or a physician assistant a nurse practitioner whatever they may have been one thing that I noticed is that people who did treat people like an algorithm who did see everything the same and who did see everybody the same and basically just saw signs and symptoms and just treated them and basically didn't really treat them like unique human beings but just treated them like an algorithm those people were incredibly unhappy I don't know if they were unhappy because they were practicing that way or if they were practicing that way because they were unhappy but those people freaking hated their jobs you know they just they didn't enjoy their jobs they're the kind of person where you get in in the morning and you go hey how are you how was your weekend how was your night they just give you this like really bland face and they go I'm here you know like what are you communicating when you say something like that someone says hey how are you I'm here you know like what that communicates is I don't want to be here I'm not happy I'm here I'm not happy that you're happy and why are you asking me this like I'm just a miserable person and I'm going to share that with you I'm going to share my misery with you by saying I'm here you know like I can't stand negative people but I'm just going to get off that rant you know because it is what it is that's not what this video is about my point is from my observations over clinical year and also even before that the medical experience that I did get and just you know life experience in general people who treat customers people who treat patients in this case like they're all the same and like they're a burden and like why are they complaining well because you're their provider and you're supposed to make them better that's why they're complaining you know and who just treat everyone the same and just see every patient as a problem not in a good way like oh I can't wait to solve this puzzle but in a bad way like oh this person is causing me stress of course they're causing you stress you're doing something complicated you're doing a really complicated job that's what you went to school for you want it to be a provider you know you got what you got so like of course they're complicated of course they're taking a lot of mental and sometimes even emotional energy from you yeah that's part of your job that's what you signed up for and so the difference that I really noticed between providers that were positive were happy did actually enjoy their jobs and their lives I mean they weren't always happy they weren't always positive you know they're not robots they're just humans that happen to be happier more well adjusted just professional humans who do enjoy their job most of the time are fulfilled by and are satisfied by and are happy that they are providers those folks people who actually did enjoy their jobs those folks did not treat every patient like an algorithm they did not treat every patient like a number they did not treat every patient like they were the same they treated everyone as they should be treated which is a unique special human being with their own brain with their own set of circumstances with their own life and they tried to take that into account when they made treatment plans and even when they made diagnoses when they like tried to figure out what was going on with the patient it wasn't always black and white they were thinking like maybe these signs and symptoms and these complaints for this person mean something different than they do for this person and I'd love to give an example but it's just there's too many that I can give and right now I'm just kind of focused on making this video and getting to the office so I definitely can't think of one right now I'm sorry but do you know what I mean like like person a saying something even if it's the exact same thing as person b saying that thing could mean two totally completely different things because of the differences in those people's lives whether that means their circumstances how they grew up what language they grew up speaking two people can say one thing the exact same thing and it can mean something totally totally different just based on how that person's mind works and people who recognize that who recognize that everybody's individual and everyone is different will never ever think that medicine is boring any time you work with people any people profession will never be boring if you understand that and if you appreciate that that every single human is different and then medicine you know all the different medications all the different tests we order all the different diseases that people can have that's already incredibly complicated so if you're so smart and you've been doing it for so long that that's getting boring to you okay understood but people will never be all the same people should never get boring to you because they'll always be different and they'll always be changing so honestly it's like the most complicated thing that you can do it's the most not boring thing that you can do is it stressful yeah is it scary and complicated and there's a lot of liability on you especially as a provider oh yeah but is it boring no none no medicine is not boring it can't be boring and if it is you're doing it wrong now some folks i'm going to take this aside a little bit some folks who are watching this if they happen to already be providers you know pa is nurse practitioners doctors and they're watching this and they're like dude you don't know what you're talking about you've only been practicing like a couple months you're brand new you're fresh out of school you don't know what you're talking about it's going to become a routine for you it's going to become boring for you you're going to get tired of it you're going to experience burnout and yeah i mean i probably will at some point and hopefully i'll recover i'm not trying to say i'm perfect or that i like found the solution like no i'm just seeing reality as it is yeah investing that much mental and like emotional energy what the hell oh like yeah of course anything that you invest that much mental and emotional energy into yeah you're going to get burned out if you do it too much if you do it 40 50 60 hours a week for many years my plan personally is not to practice for that long at least not full time i'd like to practice for like five to ten years and then use other avenues of income in order to eventually cut my practice down to part time and maybe see people for like 20 hours a week maybe 30 at the most but my dream sorry there's a cop and people are freaking out but my personal dream is yeah i absolutely love doing this i love the skill set i love practicing medicine already even though i'm brand new at it and i'd love to keep doing it but i do recognize how much it takes from you how much not only time but just effort and how much of you as a person it takes it's incredibly difficult especially while you're new so my dream is to do this for some time but eventually start cutting down because one i've just saved enough money like that's one great thing about being a provider you do make enough to where you can live fairly comfortably and still save a lot so one that i've saved enough money and two i'd like to start getting into real estate and investing in other ways to where i really in 10 years i really don't want to have to work i really only want to be working for extra income and just because it's something that i enjoy doing and that i'm good at and just like that i've cultivated the skill set and i want to keep using it but i don't want to have to do it i don't want to have to do it 40 50 hours a week for the rest of my life i'd like to put in that time and that effort like on the front end and only do it for a few years maybe up to 10 and then really start scaling back my practice so that's my dream anyway i realize that burnout is inevitable i realize that burnout is a thing especially in medicine and any really high stress career so i'm definitely not ignorant to the fact that burnout is a thing and i'm definitely not saying that medicine isn't difficult and it doesn't take a lot out of you what i am saying is that it is not boring and if you think it's boring i think you're doing it wrong and of course this perspective is coming from me a guy who spent 14 years trying to finally get here to be a medical provider you know so it's my dream it's what i feel like i was personally put on this earth to do so of course to me it's not boring and like i explained in a different video what i really love about medicine isn't necessarily all the science even though the science is super cool or just the medical processes which are super cool and like everything that's going on with the body and the medications and the procedures and the surgeries like all that's super cool to me but that's not the coolest part that's not what i really really passionate about what i really love about it is the people aspect trying to figure out how people think what they do why they do what they do and then to use that to motivate them to live longer healthier happier lives that's what i feel like i was put on this earth to do and that's why i'm so happy every day at work doing it do i get stressed yes especially when things are going wrong or that things are taking longer than they should x y and z like yeah i'm human i'm not a robot even though i love my job i am living my dream right now i still get stressed i still get depressed i still get unhappy i'm not a robot but i do still leave work every single day feeling fulfilled like i really did something and better yet than i feel like i did what i am here to do i'm living my purpose and then in the morning even if i'm tired even if i didn't sleep well or even if not saying this happened but let's say i went out on new years and the three days before that as well and stayed up really late and i happened to be tired the next day because i slept like four hours okay yeah i'm tired but i'm also excited to get in there and get the job done because it's what i am here to do and i love it so if anybody out there for even one second things that medicine is boring i'd like to challenge that and tell you from my perspective no it's not boring it is the least boring career you could possibly have and i'll see you in the next video