by Erich Rosenberger M.D.

Created on: January 09, 2009

It is not easy to become an emergency room doctor. The path is long and grueling, taking well over ten years after completing high school. Those who do make it are faced with one of the toughest jobs around. An emergency room doctor is responsible for holding the lives of their patients in their hands, sometimes quite literally. Let's take a look at what it takes to become an emergency room doctor.

The first step in becoming an emergency room doctor is to go to college. You are going to need a degree from a four year college or university. You Bachelor's degree can be in any major you choose. Contrary to popular opinion, you do not have to have a science degree to become a doctor. In fact, many medical schools look favorably at students who have "different" degrees. I'm a doctor and my undergraduate degree is in English. I have known several people in medical school who were history majors, music majors, and even an aerospace engineering major.

More important that your degree in college is your performance. You absolutely must do well in your coursework. No one is going to let you become an emergency room doctor if you have bad grades. This doesn't mean that people who aren't good in a formal academic setting aren't capable, but those are the rules which have been established. If you want to be a doctor, you have to play the game, even if it's not fair. Pick a degree that you enjoy and that you will do well in.

The average age of a starting first year medical student in America is 25. This means that most students to not apply to medical school immediately on graduating from college. Most people take a couple of years to work and gain some real-world experience. Although this is not absolutely necessary, it can be important to developing the proper maturity needed to be a good doctor.

Before you apply to medical school, you have to take a standardized exam known as the MCAT, or Medical College Admissions Test. For details on taking the MCAT, see THIS ARTICLE.

The MCAT is one of the hardest exams you will have to take up to that point in your academic career. It's a real bear. It's a day long exam that covers a wide range of topics in the basic sciences. There is a lot of chemistry, biology, physics, organic chemistry (yuck!), and even reading and English. Lately, there has been a push to change the MCAT to include more topics on genetics and molecular biology.

Make no mistake, the MCAT is hard. Very hard. You are completing against the best students in colleges nationwide.

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