Why I Want To Be A Doctor Essay

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Primum non nocere. First, do no harm. One of the most important duties of a physician is to abide by this maxim. This has been and will continue to be the statement I hold most dear to me. Unfortunately, not all doctors respect and obey this critical rule. My perspective changed rather quickly during my sophomore year in high school.

Watching my aunt struggle with lung cancer had been the most challenging situation my family had faced – until we learned that the corporate hospital in India to which she entrusted her life had administered chemotherapy to her even though she was not physically fit. I could not comprehend for a long time how a hospital could put its financial interests ahead of patient care. For a time I became disillusioned …show more content…

I wanted to become a doctor because it would give me the opportunity to provide aid to those who need it and also because doctors are well-respected members of the community. I love science, and this would be an opportunity to utilize it as well as provide myself with financial stability. Just as anyone else would, I deeply desired to make my parents proud. These were all the conventional reasons why I wanted to become a doctor. Until that point in my life, those reasons were good enough for me to become a physician. However, after my aunt passed away, I started wondering if my reasons for wanting to become a physician were genuinely good enough, or if I could become the kind of physician who puts his patients above all else.

I struggled with that question. Then I realized that instead of asking myself why I want to become a doctor, I should be envisioning the doctor I should become. I should be a doctor who values a patient’s emotional stability over my financial stability, particularly if I want to be not only well-respected but also well-trusted in the community. I should be a doctor who uses his knowledge to help patients, not a doctor who uses his patients to further his knowledge. And I should be a doctor not because I want to make my parents proud, but because I should be proud of what I

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