Do you want to study medicine and psychology in college? Psychiatrists who have been practicing for 19 years share dry goods
This year's college entrance examination has come to an end, and many candidates and parents have begun to consider the issue of choosing a major while relaxing.
Since I am a psychiatrist, many students or parents ask me, "Dr. He, if you want to study medicine, what advice do you have?" "Dr. He, the child wants to study psychology and become a psychologist in the future." But I heard that there are many pits in this major, should I learn it? ”
I have been practicing medicine for 19 years, spanning the fields of pediatrics, anesthesiology, psychiatry, scientific psychology, and multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment (MDT). In addition, I served as the head of the psychology department in a third-class hospital in the system, and now I have established my own medical platform and started a successful business.
I believe that my professional background and career experience can provide some specific and in-depth advice for candidates who wish to study medicine and psychology, analyze the pros and cons behind them, and try to help them finally get what they want, realize their self-worth in the field of medicine or psychiatry, and contribute to it.
01. The prospects for studying medicine are good, but the challenges are also great
What are the prospects for studying medicine in this day and age? Let's first listen to what the recently popular artificial intelligence ChatGPT4 has to say.
Image from ChatGPT4
Although ChatGPT4 is analyzed evenly and steadily, it seems to be nothing new, but it is relatively objective.
Doctors can indeed gain a huge sense of meaning in "saving lives and helping the wounded", realize the value of life, and the economic return is relatively possible. Moreover, unlike many professions that eat "youth rice", doctors are older and have more clinical experience accumulated, but they are more likely to be trusted and recognized by patients and their families.
Moreover, if you adhere to the road of medical practice, in addition to obtaining relatively considerable economic income, you can also experience a sense of achievement in "saving lives and helping the wounded" and realize your life value.
In addition, now that we have entered the post-epidemic era, the public is paying more and more attention to mental and physical health, people's demand for high-quality medical resources will be increasing, and the resources of excellent doctors will become "fragrant food".
In general, the development prospects of the clinical medicine profession are still good, but the challenges are also great.
First of all, the most worrying problem of contradictions between doctors and patients. In recent years, there have been repeated incidents of violent injuries to doctors, and some doctors have even lost their lives. Therefore, how to deal with the doctor-patient relationship is a great test of the wisdom of doctors.
Secondly, doctors are a profession that is more experienced and qualified, and young doctors who have just entered the industry for a few years are often very hard, and even sometimes feel that their efforts are not proportional to their returns, and the psychological pressure is great. If you want to be a doctor, you need to be mentally prepared for a long-term struggle.
Image from the Internet
Also, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, there will be virtual "digital human doctors" in the field of clinical medical care in the future, who can answer simple questions about diseases and health for the public, and even provide some basic medical services. This will undoubtedly increase the competitive pressure and continuous learning pressure for clinicians.
And in this Internet era of information explosion, the public can easily query a lot of disease knowledge, can consult online, have a bottom of the heart, and then go to the hospital to see a doctor. It will become increasingly difficult for doctors to become authoritative experts through knowledge monopolies.
Therefore, doctors should continue to learn, consciously improve their business capabilities, truly meet the needs of patients for health, and provide humanized and efficient services for patients and their families. It is really not easy to become a doctor with such outstanding ability, but once it is done, it will not only gain the trust of a large number of patients and their families, but it is difficult to find No. 1, and it is not easy to be replaced in the era of artificial intelligence.
Candidates who want to study medicine and their parents must understand the above information, seriously think about whether they really want to study medicine, whether they are suitable for studying medicine, and if they must learn, then they must be prepared for the corresponding psychological and realistic preparation.
02. If you really decide to study medicine, you must see these 4 suggestions
If you still decide to study medicine after reading the above analysis, then here are a few more specific suggestions.
First, in the future medical industry, multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment mode (MDT) is the general trend, medical students in the university stage in addition to learning the knowledge of their specialty, but also to enrich their knowledge and learn to "integrate medicine".
In the past, the specialties of clinical medicine were divided into fine and clear divisions, and many clinicians only specialized in the knowledge of a single discipline. But in fact, many patients' diseases are complex, if doctors only master a single discipline knowledge, headaches and pains, it is often difficult to provide patients with more in-depth and comprehensive services. The patient's problems are still not solved, and they are still moving from department to department, and the cost and time of medical care are higher.
Later, Mayo Clinic, known as the world's "medical mecca", proposed the multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment model (MDT), which proposed to effectively promote interdisciplinary cooperation, and at the same time combine multidisciplinary knowledge to analyze the patient's condition, and formulate a personalized, comprehensive and in-depth diagnosis and treatment plan for the patient, especially for the diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases.
The multidisciplinary approach (MDT) is now increasingly respected in the international medical field. My practice in the clinic is also this model.
Therefore, if you want to study medicine, you must have the awareness of "integrated medicine" and fully prepare for the practice of multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment (MDT) in the future.
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Second, a good doctor must not only be skilled, but also empathetic, and able to provide emotional value to patients and their families.
Many patients often complain that the doctor's service attitude is very poor, the tone of speech is impatient, and the person is dismissed in a few minutes. The doctor also felt very helpless, after all, there are too many patients, the doctor cannot allocate too much time to each patient, it is difficult to consult each patient in detail and patiently.
However, no matter how busy doctors are, they must also have empathy, which is the basic quality that excellent medical staff should have, and it is also a good medicine to solve the tension between doctors and patients. Therefore, in addition to "curing diseases", doctors must also understand the plight of patients and their families, and understand their pain from illness.
An excellent doctor not only treats patients, but more importantly, he must see the "people" and family factors behind the disease, and solve the patient's symptoms from the root.
Take Helicobacter pylori infection, which can easily cause stomach problems, and Helicobacter pylori infection often occurs in familial clusters. If doctors treat a patient alone, but do not combine home therapy, the patient is likely to become infected again after recovery.
Third, no matter which department you become a doctor in the future, I recommend learning scientific spiritual psychology.
There are many patients in the clinic who have some inexplicable, undetectable organic lesions of the physical disorders, they have been to many departments, seen many doctors, tried many methods, but failed to really relieve symptoms. They later realized that it was most likely due to mental and psychological problems.
Clinically, this is often referred to as "functional physical discomfort." Although the name does not mention "psychological," more and more clinicians have realized that these symptoms are often related to the patient's psychosocial factors.
If clinicians do not have scientific knowledge of psychopsychology, do not realize this, and only treat according to their own subject knowledge, this is likely to delay the best time for treatment.
Moreover, some physical diseases are inherently closely related to the mental and psychological problems of patients. For example, the cause of duodenal ulcer is related to the patient's long-term stress, stress and other adverse stress.
Therefore, psychology plays a very important role in the diagnosis and treatment of all diseases, and the "bio-psycho-social" advocated by the World Health Organization is increasingly recognized clinically. The Mayo Clinic in the United States, known as the "medical mecca" mentioned above, requires that all medical staff in the institution should have basic psychological knowledge and psychological counseling skills.
Fourth, medical students can try to create personal IP at the university level, improve their popularity, and open their medical career path in advance.
It often takes 7, 8 or even more years for a medical student to become a qualified clinician. During this time, in addition to mastering professional knowledge, we can also actively embrace the Internet era, try to establish self-media accounts, popularize the professional knowledge we have learned for the public, share our views on diseases, and so on.
If the personal IP can gain a good number of views and fans, and is recognized by the public, when becoming a clinician in the future, many patients and their families may come to admire it, and it will be easier to stand out in the profession.
Of course, this is not to encourage everyone to become an eye-catching "Internet celebrity" who rubs traffic. To create a high-quality medical personal IP, to get the real support of netizens, we must rely on excellent medical professional strength, correct and positive three views, and understanding and empathy for patients and netizens.
03. Want to pursue a career in mental psychology? You can refer to these two paths
In addition, there are many people who want to study psychology. In 2019, the Examination and Evaluation Center of Beijing Normal University released the "Post-00s College Entrance Examination Volunteer Interest Report". The first of the top ten science and engineering majors that the "post-00s" are most interested in is "psychology".
For studying psychology, ChapGPT4's advice is also more conventional.
Image courtesy of ChapGPT4
It should be reminded that if you want to engage in the mental health service industry, such as becoming a psychological counselor, helping others solve psychological problems, or even wanting to become a psychiatrist and cure patients' mental and psychological disorders, it is best not to study psychology as an undergraduate, but to study clinical medicine or psychiatry.
Because if you study psychology as an undergraduate, you can only become a psychological counselor or psychotherapist at most in the future, but you cannot become a doctor. However, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc. are all the categories of psychiatry, and psychological counselors/psychotherapists do not have the right to prescribe and diagnose, and career development will be greatly restricted.
Therefore, it is better to study clinical medicine or psychiatry first in the undergraduate program, obtain the qualification of clinician after graduation, and then study scientific psychology across disciplines.
Image from the Internet
Specifically, you can refer to the following 2 paths.
Path 1: Undergraduate majors in clinical medicine or psychiatry, most colleges and universities need to study at least 5 years of medical undergraduates.
If you have spare time, you can also study psychology as a second major when you are an undergraduate. Or after graduation, receive 3 years of standardized training in psychiatric clinical, and at the same time master the basic knowledge of psychology and obtain the psychological counselor certificate of authoritative institutions.
Path 2: 8 years of master's and doctoral studies, choose the direction of psychiatry. During these 8 years, you can also take psychology and obtain a psychological counselor certificate.
The duration of these two paths is about 8 years, and during these 8 years, students must do their best to learn the multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment model (MDT), especially to master the knowledge of scientific and spiritual psychology from clinical practice.
At present, there is a very short shortage of psychiatrists in China, only about 40,000, of which there are even fewer adolescent psychiatrists, less than 500. Among them, there are very few doctors who can provide high-quality multidisciplinary care (MDT) services, which can be described as rare.
If you are really interested in becoming a psychiatrist, filling the gap in this part of the medical needs and helping more patients with mental and psychological disorders to recover, the sense of achievement and reward brought by this is huge.
It should also be noted that now the new college entrance examination has abolished the arts and sciences and implemented the "3+1+2" model. Whether the preferred subject for college entrance examination candidates is "physics" or "history" also limits their choice of university majors.
The two paths mentioned above are more suitable for college entrance examination students whose first subject is "physics". If college entrance examination students whose first subject is "history" want to study medicine, there will be relatively few colleges and majors that can apply, and they may not be able to study clinical medicine or psychiatry.
In this case, if you still insist on studying psychology, because the psychological knowledge taught in the university is mainly traditional psychological knowledge, which still stays at the level of human explicit memory, students can also actively learn more efficient spiritual psychology knowledge for the clinical frontline, especially the pathological memory theory and memory reconsolidation theory involving the implicit memory level.
In this way, even if you cannot become a psychiatrist in the future, you can strive to become an excellent counselor/psychotherapist, join a medical team equipped with a psychiatrist, and also contribute to the field of mental disorders.
In addition, I would like to remind parents once again that if the child wants to learn psychology very much, or even has an obsession that must learn psychology, then he and his parents must raise awareness and understand whether there is a superimposed psychological trauma behind this "obsession".
Many teenagers want to study psychology, which may be to "save themselves" or to help friends with mental and psychological disorders around them.
Their expectations of psychology are often too high, thinking that as long as they study this major, they can cure themselves and their friends. But when they find that the psychology knowledge taught in college is difficult to achieve, they are likely to be disappointed, or even tired of school, frequently skip classes, miss classes, and face the dilemma of not being able to graduate.
Therefore, parents can tell their children the above analysis of psychology majors, so that children are psychologically prepared, but in the end, parents should respect their children's choices.
If the child still insists on studying psychology and is really disappointed after enrollment, parents must not sneer. If conditions permit, parents can discuss with their children whether to enroll in some off-campus, professional and systematic psychological counseling/psychotherapy courses so that their children can learn the content they are interested in. If it is not possible to enroll in the course, parents can also encourage their children to study on their own.
More importantly, if the child wants to "save himself", it is likely to mean that the child has suffered a lot of superimposed psychological trauma and even mental symptoms.
This is very dangerous. If parents do not respond effectively, children who leave home to go to college and encounter setbacks and difficulties are likely to suddenly have an emotional breakdown, and even extreme behavior of suicide when they are isolated cannot be ruled out.
In this case, in addition to allowing the child to receive psychiatric treatment when necessary, parents had better master "self-family therapy" and try to seize the last opportunity to repair the parent-child relationship and repair the superimposed psychological trauma suffered by the child before the child leaves the family and goes to college.
For both parents and candidates, "choosing a major" is a big challenge. It is hoped that parents and children can begin to understand the optional majors, professional learning content, the reality and prospects of employment, etc. a few years in advance, and do not wait until the end of the college entrance examination to hold Buddha's feet temporarily.
When choosing a major, try to choose the major that suits you at one time, and don't overly hope that you can change majors after enrollment, which often takes more energy and time. Moreover, in addition to considering children's interests and strengths, it is also necessary to consider social development trends.
For example, in recent years, artificial intelligence and chip manufacturing related industries have developed very rapidly, if the college entrance examination students 4 or 5 years ago chose majors related to these two fields, they are more likely to find a relatively ideal job after graduation, and move forward with the pace of social development.
However, if candidates blindly consider their interests and finally choose a relatively unpopular major, and do not pay attention to comprehensive ability training in college, they are likely to face the situation of "unemployment after graduation", or passively choose a job with the wrong major.
Of course, choosing a major in the college entrance examination is only one of the important forks in life, not the only one. I hope that candidates can try to make a more rational, scientific and suitable choice at this node, but even if it is found that this choice is not ideal, there is no need to think catastrophically, but should find ways to improve their interdisciplinary awareness and ability, comprehensive quality, and it is also possible to realize the value of life!