Why I'm Not Just A Doctor

A friend in medical school once said to me:
I’m not here for money. If I’m smart enough to become a doctor, I’m smart enough to make money elsewhere.

If I wanted to, I could quit social media entirely and just focus on medicine. I could go on to become a great doctor and make that my primary source of income. I would have a great career, I’d probably enjoy it for the most part and would live a good life too.

The thing is, I’m capable of more.

I have a thing for public speaking and content creation as I’ve managed to grow a large audience over the last few years, so why not do other things outside of medicine?

During my 4 years of medical school, I’ve seen a lot of students and doctors burnt out. People who came into this career were excited to be doctors but ended up resenting the career.

I think this is largely because medicine is all they do.

Many have stopped reading books, playing instruments, playing sports and ended up having a life consumed by medicine. They only hang around with medics, speak, eat and breathe medicine.

It’s not healthy.

While doing content creation alongside med school has not been easy, it’s been a breath of fresh air. It has opened up so many opportunities to connect with other creator-doctors around the world, it’s allowed me to travel to many countries and exposed me to a whole new array of skills.

Marketing, video editing, sales, writing, public speaking, business - many skills that medicine would never teach me.

The biggest blessing of doing more than just medicine is that I’m not reliant on one career path. I have the power to drop out of medicine and do whatever I want (I’m not going to, but the option is there). When I do my exams in medical school I can confidently say I’m not here by necessity, but rather by choice.

I choose to be a doctor.

There’s power in autonomy.

I’ve met doctors who want to change careers but medicine is all they know, so there is immense fear in making a change. I don’t want to be in that position so I try to keep myself varied.

Medicine is a lot broader than people give it credit. If you’re good at speaking and you’re a doctor you can become a public speaker in your domain. Take a look at Ali Abdaal, Andrew Huberman, Matthew Walker or Atal Gawande - they took knowledge from the medical field and turned it into a completely different career. Podcasting, public speakers, authors, productivity and health experts.

The possibilities are endless, so I will be exploring my potential with my career as time goes on.

As a fresh medical student, I was so excited to flex my ‘medical student’ title, but as I’ve matured that title is only a small part of me.

I’m more than just a doctor.