doctor vs mechanical engineer?

Keziah,

Going the M.D. route is a serious undertaking with regards to time and money. As an engineer, I have been able to work my way into the medical field in designing and developing devices which positively impact people's lives. Although, I don't interface with my product's end-users, I take solace in the fact that what I do is making a difference. Obviously, since I do not have a medical degree, I will cannot hide my bias. But I will say that a great deal of good can be accomplished through engineering and one doesn't have to abandon medicine to work in the medical field.

Additionally, should your interests change with time, engineering (I'm a mechanical by training - which is very versatile) can afford you opportunities to pursue other career interests.

Best of luck in your future endeavors!

Dear Keziah,

The most honest answer is it depends on what you want. Ideally, you want a career where you feel like in the morning, you are excited to go to work. (OK, this doesn't necessarily happen every morning, but a good majority of the time.) I would ask (for example, here on CareerVillage.org) what is the day to day lives of mechanical engineers and doctors. Please note that what people do day to day may vary greatly depending on the specialization. Speaking as a husband of a pediatrician, I can say the day to day life of a medical doctor may be different than what the general perception is, so please do ask around. Even generally, there are doctors whose main job is to see patients, but there are also doctors whose main job is to do research in medicine/biology (and they see patients for a small fraction of time each week).

Now, if it is that you would like to combine your love of mechanical engineering with something medical, there are in fact many options. Some include:

• Getting a M.D./Ph.D. This is where you get a M.D. and a Ph.D., sometimes from the same institution, but sometimes from related institutions. For example, MIT and Harvard have such a joint program. One could do a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering or biomechanical engineering at MIT and get the M.D. at Harvard Med.


• Going for a field where you are applying mechanical engineering to medical applications. This could be purely through being a mechanical engineer working on medical devices (including implants). Or, you can look at the field of biomedical engineering. (My Ph.D. had a good component of this in it.) In this field, you are applying mechanical engineering principles to medical applications. (I developed methods for efficiently solving complex mathematical equations that modeled how artificial arteries are formed.) You can search for biomedical engineering on the web. Johns Hopkins University, for example, has a biomedical engineering department as well as a number of professors in the mechanical engineering department that work on medical applications, http://me.jhu.edu/research/mechanical-engineering-in-biology-and-medicine.


• Get a M.D., collaborating with mechanical engineers on some projects of interest to you. This applies primarily if you plan on becoming a M.D. doing mostly research. M.D.s that primarily see patients rarely have time for external research like this.

The intersection of medicine with mechanical engineering is really a very exciting field. There is a I hope the above helps. Best wishes!

It depends on your personality. If you are a "people person" and enjoy interacting with people, then you might enjoy being a doctor more than an engineer. I have known doctors that acted more like human mechanics than doctors. They were cold and clinical and didn't seem to care a rip about me as a person. I did not keep them as my doctor.

If you enjoy machinery and computers more than people, if you enjoy solving problems that have answers that are more "black and white" than gray, then engineering might be more for you.

You can still be an engineer and enjoy people and interacting with them.