Memory, Money, and Medicine

 Memory, Money, and Medicine: A Doctor’s Perspective

When I speak with students hoping to enter medical school, I often ask them why they want to be doctors. Too often, the answers are rehearsed. They tell me what they think the interviewer wants to hear: “I want to help people.” “I’ve always been fascinated by science.” The reality? Many already have their eye on a lucrative specialty. They know how to play the admissions game, how to shape a perfect résumé, and how to memorize the right answers.

There’s no doubt these students are bright — but bright in a very particular way. They have excellent memories. They can cram for an exam and come out with an A. The same is true in law: I’ve met lawyers who could recall case precedents verbatim but couldn’t think outside the lines when a client’s situation didn’t match the textbook.

Medicine, however, isn’t a memory contest. It’s an art practiced in the grey zone, where guidelines meet messy human realities. Patients don’t arrive with multiple-choice answers written on their foreheads. They arrive with pain, financial limitations, fear, and complex stories. A doctor’s skill isn’t measured by how many facts he can recall, but by how well he can listen, weigh risks, show patience, and act with common sense.

I’ve seen many physicians — even those considered “not especially intelligent” — succeed because they could memorize and test well. But the qualities that truly matter in a healer are harder to measure: compassion, judgment, humility, and the ability to sit with uncertainty.

Future doctors (and lawyers, too): remember this. Your grades and your exam scores will open the door, but they will not make you wise. True wisdom comes from listening, from staying humble, from practicing PTU — patience, tolerance, and understanding. That is what makes a physician worth trusting.

Jake Ames, MD, HMD