We focus a lot on how students can prove they're good enough for medicine. These posts are for students wondering if medicine is good enough for them.
Short Version: Medicine a well-regarded profession. Most people generally assume physicians are reasonably intelligent and high-achieving. Perceptions of the profession are slowly changing, however, and not necessarily for the better. More importantly, prestige essentially represents the opinions of others based on superficial qualities and only matter to the extent that those opinions are valued. Prestige in a career is often most meaningful to those who feel their job lacks prestige. As such, its main value is in assuaging personal insecurities, but it can only do so much on that front. Having a prestigious profession is no substitute for developing strong personal self-esteem. At the end of the day, prestige is a hollow comfort if a physician does not find the actual work of their job satisfying.
Long Version: Humans are social beings. We intrinsically care about what others think of us, even when those opinions fail to represent reality. It is in this light that we should consider the prestige of going into medicine.
The majority of individuals have positive opinions about physicians. In multiple polls, medicine is still regarded as one of the more respected, ethical, and trustworthy professions. Physicians tend to be thought of as intelligent and hard-working. Becoming a physician is often thought of as an achievement in isolation. Being a physician has many of the trappings of prestige, of being though of positively by society - with the "Dr." title, high pay, often an office, many times physicians get additional awards, or honours, or academic appointments.
It is hard to deny that medicine is a prestigious profession. Yet their are some cracks in public perception of physicians. With high earnings, physicians' earnings are coming into question, with concerns about the value the profession places on money. As medical knowledge disseminates more broadly, the expertise of physicians is more frequently under scrutiny by patients. Moreover, physicians can be seen as cold or uncaring when failing to meet the typically high expectations of empathy. If physicians ever were implicitly trusted because of their profession alone, that time has long passed.
What often gets lost in conversations about professional prestige is that while professions may have general qualities, they're made up of individuals. Individuals have their own qualities which may adhere to or contrast with those of their profession. For example, a physician isn't intelligent because they're a physician - they're intelligent because what they have acquired a good base of knowledge and the problem-solving skills necessary to use that knowledge effectively. The vast majority of physicians are intelligent, having the mental faculties to make complex clinical decisions competently, but there are exceptions. Becoming a physician doesn't instill intelligence automatically and as a result, a small minority of physicians are not particularly bright. Likewise, choosing to not become a physician will not remove intellect from an already-intelligent person.
So why should prestige matter at all? Well, it gets back to that original question - we care what others think of us. Furthermore, we want those positive opinions of us even when we don't have the time or opportunity to demonstrate our true qualities. It's not feasible or socially acceptable to demonstrate your level of intelligence to every person we meet. Our careers provide a proxy for who we are as people, whether we think that proxy reflects who we are or not. Being a physician provides a benefit of the doubt other professions often don't.
That benefit of the doubt can be a small comfort, however, when knee-deep in the medical profession. If there's one group of people unimpressed by someone being a physician, it's other physicians. In medicine, particularly in the training phase, guess who you'll be spending most of your time with? Likewise, most of the non-physicians you work with won't be overly impressed by your job. Nurses, pharmacists, PSWs, RTs, and the gamut of other healthcare workers have been around physicians long enough not to be in awe of the title. They will generally like you as a physician if you work well with them and do a good job for your patients, but will never like you because you're a physician.
The bottom line is that a prestigious career provides some benefits in terms of how you're viewed by others, especially those who don't know you well. When choosing a career based on prestige alone, you could do much worse than medicine. Yet, prestige is a weak and inconsistent shield against the judgments of others. Not everyone views physicians in a positive light, particularly those in regular close proximity to physicians. Therefore, as with any career, having the self-esteem to recognize who you are as a person, independent of how your job is viewed, is vital. If you don't have the confidence in your own abilities or value, being a physician will not provide much help to assuage those feelings. Similarly, if you do have confidence in who you are, that will show through regardless of what your career happens to be.
In the end, I believe that the prestige of the career is a positive reason to become a physician, but an exceedingly minor one. If a physician enjoys their work and the other aspects of medicine, the prestige of medicine is a helpful perk. For those that aren't as thrilled by the job itself, prestige is a poor consolation prize.
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