Applying to medical school is an exciting decision, but the application process is very competitive. This means when it comes to your application, you need to ensure you’ve put your best foot forward and done everything you can to stand out from other applicants.
Medicine is not an easy path. It is not the same as another job where you can easily pivot to a different career.
However, it can be one of the most gratifying careers and decisions in life. Do not choose your career based on prestige or salary. That will not sustain you.
Choose what fulfills you. What makes you happy and satisfied. Here are some medical school motivation quotes.
“The chapter you are learning today is going to save someone’s life tomorrow. Pay attention.”
Motivation for pre med students or Medical students
A doctor’s journey is one of the hardest and most stressful ones. They have to undergo tough and rigorous training throughout their medical education; they always seek study motivation as medical study is hard.
The medical education system in Pakistan is a minimum of 8.5 years, including 2 years of pre-medical college, 5 years of graduation, and 1.5 of house job while in the U.S. is a minimum of 11 years, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school and at least 3 years of residency and is truly a test of survival among the students and is one of the most testing phases of an individual’s life.
Students really need some kind words and motivation to study medicine. Let’s discuss some ways of staying motivated during your medical education:
Extracurricular Activities
It can get extremely stressful as a pre-med student, especially when you put more and more time studying and powering through the workload. Take some time out for relaxing yourself.
Try to break down the workload, if possible, and read medical motivational quotes, or do something to entertain yourself. Make yourself happy by engaging in some activities like reading a book, going for a jog, or enlist yourself in sports.
“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”
Time Management
Time management can help you be more productive and help break down the workload. It’s not always to burn out yourself by taking on all the workload head-on.
“Sooner or later your work speaks for itself. Outlasting critics feel like it will take a very long time, but you’re more patient than they are.” – Seth Godin
Don’t worry about meeting deadlines
Instead, counting hours of study does the quality of the study, which is far better than the quantity of study where you retain nothing in the back of your brain.
This is something most medical students forget and often get demotivated sometimes. You need to understand that not all deadlines can be met. You need to focus on the content of the work rather than the size of it.
“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King
Change your study places from time to time
Studying in one place can often become a bit boring and can lead to procrastination.
“You have to be odd to be number 1.” – Dr. Seuss
Look behind the curtains
The medical college is not just a test of intellect but also of composure and grit. Try looking at your long-term goals and don’t lose track of them.
Failing a test is always recoverable in the next one, but losing track of why you’re here is something that can be highly damaging for your future career.
“Only a doctor can teach how to love life.”
“Do your best. One day, you will be someone’s hero.”
Stay Healthy, Positive and Patient
In a medical journey, you have to be focused and you should have the motivation to study medicine yourself, instead of fulfilling your parent’s dream.
Having a healthy diet can help you stay fresh and positive before a test or throughout your day. Try to work out and get as much sleep as you can, so you can stay motivated towards medicine.
These things help you stay positive, energetic throughout your medical education.
“You don’t have to be brilliant to be a doctor. You have to be hardworking and have good character. That’s what makes good doctors.”
Imagine yourself as a doctor
This is something that should be a motivation for all medical students. If you don’t feel motivated, it can be tough sometimes to get on track. Imagine yourself helping a patient and the motivation that spurred you on to become a doctor.
“Not all angels have wings, some have stethoscopes.”
First and foremost, make sure you love medicine and want to pursue it for the right reasons. Unlike many other careers, medicine requires long years of training and many personal sacrifices.
So choose wisely! Secondly, the medical school application is a very demanding and stressful process that needs patience and persistence. The key to success is to stay positive, work hard, and improve yourself as a person and applicant.
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” ― Voltaire
Focus
Medical students often do not realize when they are losing focus. This can be an essential factor when spending hours studying for a competitive test. Lack of focus leads to inefficiencies in our day and halts our progress.
To increase motivation for medical students, knowing when you lose focus and how to correct this can be vital. Distractions and task-switching reduce our productivity and focus.
“The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.” -Thomas Sydenham
You Can Improve your Locus of Control
You can always motivate and improve your locus of control by speaking kind, gentle and positive words to yourself, don’t think that,
- “I’m bad at IV’s,”
- “I am not good at dissections,” or
- “I suck at standardized tests.”
Stop blaming yourself. Instead, think positive:
- “I just need more practice at IVs,”
- “I want to learn better techniques for dissection,” or
- “Let’s find more effective strategies for standardized test-taking.”
Aim to see the results around you as the product of your actions. You can take control. And, by doing so, read some motivational medical quotes to keep yourself motivated.
“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and the art of probability.” – William Osler
Some Motivational quotes for medical students success
Here we have a list of encouraging words for medical students who need motivation,
- “I want to experience the most beautiful adrenaline rush of my life. A rush while taking medical pledge/oath.”
- “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love for humanity.” – Hippocrates
- “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” – Elon Musk
- “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
- “One day, people will thank you that you didn’t give up now.”
- “I did it sounds way better than I could’ve done it.”
- “Be like the stem cell, differentiate yourself from others.”
- “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little ‘extra’.”
- “The harder you’ll work for something, the greater you will feel when you’ll achieve it.”
- “If you aren’t willing to keep looking for light in the darkest of places without stopping even when it seems impossible, you will never succeed.”
- “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.“ -William Osler
- “The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer, all the wickedness, the theologian, all the stupidity.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
- “The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy – to heal, as it is termed.” – Samuel Hahnemann
- “The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life; the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician.” —William J. Mayo
- “To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.” – William Osler
- “Study hard until you can say “I am a doctor” everything is gonna be alright.”
- “Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health.” – Lois Capps
- “Behind every fine doctor, there is always a nurse.”
- “Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.” – Norman Cousin
- “Life is so short, the craft so long to learn.” ― Hippocrates
- “The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
- “Sometimes, the best thing we can do for our patients is to tell them what the best behavior is and then negotiate something they can live with.” —Nancy Dickey
- “Study to save lives.”
- “The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.“ – Thomas Edison
- “You can’t judge the ability of a doctor by the amount of praise the undertakers give him.“ – Evan Esar
- “Though fancy may be the patient’s complaint, necessity is often the doctor’s.“ – Zimmermann
- “People pay the doctor for his trouble; for his kindness they still remain in his debt.“ – Seneca
- “Medicines cure diseases, but only doctors can cure patients.“ – Carl Jung
- “Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.” —Norman Cousins
- “Always remember the privilege it is to be a physician.”― Daniel P. Logan
- “He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- “To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.”– Henry Ward Beecher
- “Only the healing art enables one to make a name for himself and at the same time give benefit to others.”
- “The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life; the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician.” —William J. Mayo
- “Let me congratulate you on the choice of calling which offers a combination of intellectual and moral interests found in no other profession.”― Sir William Olser
- There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard working and learning from failure. —Colin Powell
- “Sometimes we called one another by our future doctor names. We did it partly to be funny, but mostly because we liked it when people did it back to us.”― David Z. Hirsch.
- “A life saved is a family saved.” ― Abhijit Naskar.
- “The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.”― William Osler
- “Don’t quit you will look prettiest in the white coat!”
- “A Diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.”
- “If you can’t wake up in the middle of the night for study, how will you wake up to save a life?”
- “Every minute you waste in doing nothing, just remember that someone is getting smart somewhere.”
- “If you want to shine like the sun, first learn to burn like the sun!”
- “Success demands sacrifices, Sacrifice of sleep, comfort zone and entertainment.”
Conclusion
Medical school is a rough period, and any method to improve our mood, focus, and incentives in our studies can be incredibly beneficial. Just remember that not all of these techniques will work all the time.
Try to implement them in different scenarios and at different times to see what works best for you.
In the end, medical students need to remember they are only competing against themselves.
Maximizing your abilities and efficiencies is all you can do. Hopefully, these motivation techniques, and medical student quotes can improve your focus, mental health and you can achieve tremendous academic success.