Why Premeds Should Read More

By Manasa Davuluri on October 16, 2013

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As a premed and English major, I’m naturally forced to read a lot, but most science majors and pre-meds are so busy with everything from classes to extracurriculars that they cannot fathom reading for leisure. Yet with med schools stressing the importance of being well-rounded and the fact that the MCAT Verbal section is the Achilles’ heel of many otherwise brilliant students, the cultivation of reading skills seems to be more crucial than we think. In case you are still unconvinced about the importance of literature in our lives and how it could aid in your future health career, here are a few compelling reasons:

Physicians (and all of us in general) would benefit from developing a sense of empathy with the tribulations of others, but there is no way to learn about every situation in life by experience. Even though fiction uses an artificially constructed plot to tell a story, there are universal truths present within that artistic creation. Reading stories allows you to glean those truths from circumstances you may never encounter in your real life. While reading a novel, you can literally be another person for a few days. If that’s not a cause for empathy, I don’t know what is. Simply understanding where others are coming from before rushing to apply judgment goes a long way in making the world a better place.

Facts and data are not the main motivators of social change or compassion towards others. Learning about the numbers of dead in a war or the number of lives stolen by a horrifying epidemic is illuminating, sure. However, after some time those numbers become, well, just numbers. We may become desensitized to the facts but hearing other people’s stories and their personal struggles is more resistant to such desensitization. Learning about others’ inner lives and turmoil can open your mind and make you care about them in profound ways.

Reading fiction opens your mind to imagination, the art of seeing what could be. There is a societal stress on being realistic and focusing only on what’s there in front of you. But if you don’t imagine, how can you or your world ever be better? As a doctor, if you only see what’s in front of you, you treat the case and nothing more. But if you imagine new possibilities for your patients’ well-being you can prevent problems from ever happening in the first place and foresee future concerns. Literature will expose you to lives, circumstances, problems and solutions that you probably couldn’t dream up on your own. By learning to assimilate more options into your own world view, you can begin to help others on a grander scale than you would have settled for otherwise.

Despite the horrible things happening in the world and the monotony of daily life, fiction allows us to see beauty that we often ignore. This is especially relevant to med students, who often lose focus of the human aspect of medicine by getting overwhelmed with studying and passing those dreaded exams. Reading an enlightening novel reminds us there is always beauty to look forward to, the light at the end of every tunnel. However, it is also an important lesson for actual physicians. With higher rates of physician burnout being reported, it is clear that many doctors are unsatisfied and overstressed, which can cause them to grow cynical and distant from their patients. For them, the stories encountered in great literature can serve as a gentle reminder that there is always beauty in the people around us, waiting to be discovered.