- Sarah Drake
- Indianapolis, IN
- United States
This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
What does it take to become a doctor?
Doctors want to help people. What other qualities or personality traits should they have? What should their motivation be?
Topics:
College Education Doctor Medical
chen xin
since it is a job of caring people ,we should learn something about communicate and deal with the person.
Rick Ryan 10+
After that, some may be motivated by the financial income of doing it, although not all. There are many doctors who provide their services at a much less income-producing level by volunteering to do humanitarian services in poor countries, etc.
Some do research only (after their internship) and may never work "hands on" with an actual patient. But they may feel they are still "helping people", which they would be.
What qualities should they have? Lots of different ones. But one big one I would suspect that successful doctors end up having is the understanding that they are in an eventual "no win" discipline. They may be able to help someone "live longer", but in the end everybody dies despite the best efforts of the doctor. So compassion (at least to me) is a necessary quality, but it has to be tempered with reality. The doctor may be caught between "rules of the discipline" such as the Hippocratic Oath which is subject to controversy today because of differing integrity, moral, ethical, and legal debates. And these debates may take different sides depending on who the doctor "works for".
John Smith 30+
People skills, hard work, a strong stomach, rich parents.