Why I Quit My Job as a Doctor: My Honest Story

Quitting medicine wasn’t a leap into a new identity so much as a long overdue correction: six years after leaving a doctor job, Justin Sung credits his shift to one core realization—career decisions can’t be made once, at a young age, and then left on autopilot. The work became emotionally misaligned, and the hospital culture felt exploitative and disempowering, pushing him to seek a life where impact and agency were his, not his managers’. The move mattered because it reframed “career fulfillment” from a fixed destination into an ongoing process of alignment, tested through experience rather than predictions.

Sung traces the decision back to childhood reinforcement. He says he chose medicine without parental pressure, largely because early enthusiasm was socially rewarded—people praised the goal, which made it feel correct. In his first university year, he describes an extreme, unhealthy level of obsession to get into medical school, treating the goal as if every detail of his body existed for it. He later entered medical training without fully understanding what daily life as a doctor would actually feel like, and without clarity on what personally created fulfillment or even what his values were.

That lack of self-knowledge collided with the realities of medical work. He still enjoys medicine as a topic, but he says the day-to-day environment—especially how managers treated staff—was toxic in ways that went beyond hours and stress. The deeper problem, he argues, was disempowerment: he felt he could do more but lacked control over whether he could make meaningful impact. Over time, he watched many classmates share burnout and dissatisfaction, yet they didn’t revisit the original choice made when they were children.

A turning point came from experience in other roles. Before and during medical school, Sung built coaching and education work in the nonprofit space, tutoring students and creating a mentoring program aimed at educational inequity. He says the biggest difference wasn’t just content delivery; it was teaching effective learning skills to students who lacked the academic exposure richer peers had. Running that program helped him distinguish between fulfillment from education and fulfillment from other motivations—something he believes couldn’t be learned through research alone.

Sung also challenges common career advice. He argues that there’s a limit to what can be known before trying: some aspects of identity and values only become clear after being “exploited as a junior doctor” and reflecting on what that experience does to someone. He further claims that “work-life balance” is the wrong frame; the real question is whether time is spent intentionally in alignment with how one wants to live. He illustrates this with a shift-covering story: extra pay didn’t justify the sleep loss and schedule damage, leading him to conclude that money can’t compensate for a life that feels misaligned.

After building a business to create financial runway, he left with a reported 60% pay cut, living on under $40,000 a year while protecting the main risk—regret. His guiding principle became simple: aim for a minimum income that supports responsibilities, then focus on alignment and the willingness to pivot. He calls out two “scams” he sees in career culture: believing the ideal career can be known when young, and believing values are discovered rather than created through lived testing. The practical takeaway is iterative—try small experiments, learn what triggers unfulfillment, and keep adjusting until clarity emerges, even if the “right answer” never arrives all at once.