This old age interview question is one that every aspiring doctor must consider when they are deciding if medicine is for them. I remember my impression of doctors when I was younger as being smartly dressed gods in white coats rushing around hospitals saving lives. This impression soon faded to the reality we see on work experience of very hard working people, often under a pile of paper work doing their utmost to improve the lives of their patients. By thinking about this reality and what you need to be a doctor you can discover if you think you have what it takes. As a first entry I thought it might be a good thing to write about, as the likelihood is many of us will have to answer this on the most important/stressful day of our lives so far (interview day!). Normally the interviewer will ask for the 3 most crucial qualities a doctor must possess, so it’s these qualities that I’m going to focus on.
One of the most obvious but something that cannot be overlooked is how a doctor must be caring. Everything a doctor does must be an attempt to make their patients’ lives better, as the (now) cliché interview answer goes ‘I want to help people’. While saying this is metaphorically shooting yourself in the foot in an interview the problem is to be a doctor you must want to help people. If you are not a caring person maybe medicine isn’t the best career path for you…..
Another important quality that is needed by everyone throughout their medical career is dedication. The day you decide to become a doctor you are saying you must get through one of, it not the most competitive university applications there is, pass one of the longest and most strenuous degrees there is and commit yourself to a lifetime of hard work (as we’ve all seen in our work experience). To do all this requires a huge amount of dedication and I think maybe it is this quality that makes all medics such amazing people.
Perhaps the most important thing a doctor must be is diligent. Diligence is defined as ‘The earnest and persistent application to an undertaking’ and without this work ethic you cannot be dedicated and you cannot be as caring as you need to be - why diligence is so crucial. Atul Gawande in his book ‘Better’ writes ‘The seemingly easiest and most sensible rule for a doctor to follow is: always fight.’, and is this not what diligence is? Persisting to fight and do the best for your patients.
So those are what I believe are the 3 most important qualities a doctor needs, the only question is, do you have what it takes?
Alex Butcher
