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Diverse male and female young medical students confidently take notes during their professor's lecture.They are wearing scrubs.
Local cardiac surgeon Dr. Richard Lee isn’t afraid to pull over to ask for directions. In his new book, “Get Directions: A Career as a Physician,” he models his professional life in medicine after a cross country road trip: there are shortcuts, speed bumps, and moments of defeatism.
Photo courtesy of Laura Keller
Dr. Richard Lee wants his book to provide advice and resources that were hard for him to find as a fledgling doctor.
But you don't have to go it alone. As Dr. Lee journeyed from high school to his current position as the vice chairman of Saint Louis University’s Center of Comprehensive Cardiovascular Care, he realized there wasn’t enough support for emerging physicians.
“There aren’t may people who have done it from beginning to end, not just completing the process but participating in the process,” he says. “There are a million books on how to get into medical school…but there isn’t anything that follows from high school to the whole path.”
His new book mentors anyone on the path of medicine—from freshmen to fellows—with practical advice from his personal story. But his book is also rich with wisdom from varying vantage points: physicians who are mothers, those who went into medicine instead of surgery, and medical students who are sweating the MCAT.
Here are ten tips from a seasoned guide.
1.Examine your dreams. Dr. Lee challenges young people to pause and consider why the path of a physician would be personally meaningful for them: “It makes sense to look the entire span of a career and try and figure out what you want to get out of it.”
2. The path begins in high school. Curious about medicine? Try it first, Dr. Lee advises. Volunteer in a medical setting to gain exposure to the field, and keep your grades and test scores up.
3. Choose the right college—for you. Go for a college with the most name recognition, one that “feels” right, and is financially realistic. “Your first school is the school in which you end up,” Dr. Lee advises.
5. After college, don’t take a gap year. If you’re feeling like you need a break after undergrad, pay attention to Dr. Lee’s caution: the work will only ramp up. Use this red flag to determine if medicine is really the best path for you.
4. Start studying early for the MCAT. Make studying a part of your daily practice for a year or two before you take the test. Even if it’s 20-30 minutes a day, you’ll be well prepared.
5. Get experience in health care. Bolster your med school application with work as a clinical trials research assistant or draw blood or shadow. Whatever it takes to stand out from other applicants.
6. Use these application rules of thumb: Submit a third of your applications to stretch schools, another third to schools for which you are a solid candidate, and the last third for those which consider you an exceptional candidate. And prepare for the interview!
8. Choose a specialty that lights you up. Get a great deal of experience in as many specialties and subspecialties as you can, and don’t pick a field for the lifestyle or the compensation. “All that matters is that you do something you love,” he writes.
9. Thrive in residency. Be sure to enjoy the privilege of the experience, maintain the confidence of your colleagues, and accept that you will be under constant evaluation. Thick skin helps.
10. Pursue a fellowship program. Dr. Lee advises selecting a marketable niche, choosing an institution that has a track record of placing people in academics and one leadership positions in your field. Recommendations are everything in getting in.
10. “Be Able, Affable, and Available.” That’s Dr. Lee’s mantra for anyone on the long haul toward private or academic practice, or the pursuit of academic promotions.
At a recent Women in Thoracic Surgery conference, Dr. Lee got to experience a small payoff for his efforts. “I had the best Sunday ever,” he says. “There must have been 60 or so women on the stage—so much that they couldn’t fit everyone in the picture. Just five years ago, there were only two women.”
After the conference, four of those women came up to him and thanked him for his guidance as their mentor. “Who knows?” he says. “They are all winners. They would be successful without anything I gave them. But I felt like maybe I did have an impact on their life and decisions.”
“Get Directions” is available on amazon.com.
