Got my MD!

flyinguitar

flyinguitar

Well-Known Member
Just under 6 years after leaving my last flying job, I graduated from medical school. I will be doing a 3-year residency in Emergency Medicine. I'm taking advantage of the light schedule this month to brush up my tailwheel skills in a Sport Cub and hopefully tow gliders for a local soaring club.

I hope to be a resource for anyone interested in going this route.... I'm not out to talk anyone out of flying or into medicine, just here to provide info on this particular career change. So far, I'm glad I did it! Definitely lots of pluses and minuses.
 
flyinguitar said:
Just under 6 years after leaving my last flying job, I graduated from medical school. I will be doing a 3-year residency in Emergency Medicine. I'm taking advantage of the light schedule this month to brush up my tailwheel skills in a Sport Cub and hopefully tow gliders for a local soaring club.

I hope to be a resource for anyone interested in going this route.... I'm not out to talk anyone out of flying or into medicine, just here to provide info on this particular career change. So far, I'm glad I did it! Definitely lots of pluses and minuses.
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Congratulations, Doctor.

Where did you study?
 
flyinguitar said:
Just under 6 years after leaving my last flying job, I graduated from medical school. I will be doing a 3-year residency in Emergency Medicine. I'm taking advantage of the light schedule this month to brush up my tailwheel skills in a Sport Cub and hopefully tow gliders for a local soaring club.

I hope to be a resource for anyone interested in going this route.... I'm not out to talk anyone out of flying or into medicine, just here to provide info on this particular career change. So far, I'm glad I did it! Definitely lots of pluses and minuses.
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Kick ass!
 
GypsyPilot said:
Wow! Very impressive. How old were you when you made the switch?
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32 when I finally started med school. I had quit my flying job 2 years earlier but already had the prerequisites. It took 1 year to go through the application cycle and then I deferred for another year after that. If you already have a BA but need to start the pre-med courses from scratch it would take 2-3 years to get them out of the way and apply.
 
Wow! Massive congrats!
It's an immensely difficult path to medical school, and difficult to appreciate unless you've tried. Good job, doctor! Best of luck in your future endeavors.
 
So how many people did you see in medical school who were career changers? You see pilots all the time who are career changers, but I can't remember ever seeing someone doing residency in middle age. I always assumed it was pretty much impossible to get into med school as a career changer.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
So how many people did you see in medical school who were career changers? You see pilots all the time who are career changers, but I can't remember ever seeing someone doing residency in middle age. I always assumed it was pretty much impossible to get into med school as a career changer.
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There are more than you would think. Maybe 10-15% of the class my wife graduated with had done something between college and med school.

The application process is grueling, but the real challenge is living without any real income for 4 years while attending all the necessary classes. Working your way through is not a real option, nor is part time classes. We wouldn't have made it through without some significant help from our family. We managed to graduate with only a modest amount of debt which we aggressively paid off, but most med school grads are so far in the hole that they will likely retire before paying off their student loans.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
So how many people did you see in medical school who were career changers? You see pilots all the time who are career changers, but I can't remember ever seeing someone doing residency in middle age. I always assumed it was pretty much impossible to get into med school as a career changer.
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Quite a few, although not the majority. One of my classmates was an F-15 pilot who went to med school after doing his 10 years. He was 2 years older than me. There were quite a few others, too. A lot of the residents in my program are in their 30s.

While traditional applicants still make up the majority, med schools and residencies have figured out that some extra life experience can be a very positive asset for the budding doctor. If your pre-medicine career was productive, you can make a strong case for why medicine now, and you can hang with the crowd academically, I think it's actually an advantage. As you can imagine, my F-15 buddy was eaten up. I think pilots have an advantage because doctors generally find aviation to be very impressive (I refrain from disabusing them of this) and assume pilots will make good doctors. I spent a lot of time on med school and residency interviews discussing various aviation topics and I could tell the interviewers were very interested.
 
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My nephew's lady friend is in her MD residency in Oregon; she originally was a Julliard graduate.

Congratulations!
 
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