Documentary Review: Becoming a Doctor

Becoming a doctor requires great physical and mental stamina. Getting accepted into medical by itself is a monumental task. Furthermore, once someone is accepted into medical school they still have to study day and night and sacrifice their youth to studying medicine. The documentary How to Become a Doctor explained how students coped and managed to pull through medical school and eventually become doctors. Several personal experiences were shared that helped illustrate the level of stress and patience required to become a doctor.

Several medical students were interviewed and documented through their course of medical school. Each came from different backgrounds but all shared the same aspirations and goals. They had to work diligently and very hard. One student used a stopwatch to count how much time he spent studying a day. It turns out he studied on average actively for about 6 hours each day. Also, this did not include his class work and lectures that he had to attend.

Another student described how it felt to first dissect human cadavers. Most students have read about anatomy in their textbooks, but the real life hands on experience is truly something that cannot be taught through books. Some students were said to have cried or left the room while others felt grateful for some person's donation of their body to medicine.
Also, in medical school, before students get to see any patients they practice on each other. For example, they had to draw each others blood and practice. I joke, "this is when you find out who your real friends are," as you might get poked several times because your friend's hand is unsteady.

Later in the movie one student described her first experience with death in a patient. One of her patients died when she had reassured him that he would be OK. This of course relates to the great psychological and mental trauma that doctors must learn to cope with. Also it shows that doctors have a great level of responsibility as they hold another's life in their hands.

All in all, the movie tried to demonstrate that being a doctor is not an easy task at all. In fact, being a doctor requires a level of dedication that few have. To add to this, the students were studying in Harvard and perhaps the level of difficulty and competition in that school made the passage through medical school more difficult that usual.