| Topic Name: |
life as a physician |
| Message Name: |
From my perspective |
| Date Posted: |
05/26/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
OK, you're graduating from med school. I'm not impressed that you have any idea of what your life will be like after this.
$40K for residency? Great... since you'll be working an average of 80-100 hour weeks, that averages out to $8-10/hour wages. Terrific!
And how do you know exactly how much you'll be making when you come out of residency? Unless you already have a practice lined up (which I seriously doubt), you have NO IDEA what you'll be making three years from now. So that point is ridiculous. All you can use are the averages from today, which are starting salaries of $60-80K for primary care. And those salaries are very UNLIKELY to increase substantially, particularly when nurse practitioners can do a similar job for a lot less.
And I'm not sure where you get off calling the previous poster "disgusting." He or she is being realistic about medicine. You need to wake up and smell the coffee. Medicine in the past was lucrative and secure. It's still not a bad salary, but the security is significantly less than in the past, as is the take-home pay.
And yes, med school IS a lot of memorization. But if you think that's all that medical practice is, then you will have a VERY rude awakening shortly. |
| Message: |
I have been checking out the boards of different professions just out of curiousity. Sometimes I get the "grass is always greener on the other side" feeling, and I like to see what its like in other fields.
I am an attorney. I've been at it a few years. Its a tough profession. It too is not like it was 20 years ago when it was viewed as a ticket to wealth. Unless you work for a big firm, you start out making slave wages and work 60-70 hours a week. I guess you can compare it to a physician's residency. Jobs are hard to find if you come from a lesser law school but with persistence you can find one. Than, if you work hard and build a good reputation, have good networking skills and build a practice within the firm you work for, or on your own, you can make very good money.
Stress is high. You deal with people in highly charged situations and you have to be in combat mode a good part of the time. You do your job and its your adversaries job to take the opposite position, find an advantage, and try to prove that your work product and rationale is wrong. When the daily mail arrives your heart can start pounding if you don't have a thick skin.
I guess doctors have similar stresses. Its not a perfect science either, and I'm sure a lot of you second guess yourselves, like if a patient dies, thinking if you took path B instead of path D he might have survived.
Nothing is guaranteed in law. I know some lawyers out of school less than 5 years making over $500k, and I know some lawyers out 20 years making 45k. It's my perception that doctors have it much easier than I do. I can't conceive of a doctor making only $45k, even if they are at the low end, unless they are dedicating their lives to helping the poor.
Where med school is memorization, I'm guessing the real test is when you have to take what you learned/memorized and have to apply it to real world situations.
Law school wasn't all memorization. Tests were all essay format, comprised of hypothetical situations. We had to take what we learned and apply it to the hypo and argue for or against a point and explain our reasoning. Classes were conducted in a similar fashion.
While it did prepare us to deal with real law practice factual situations in terms of analysis, it did not prepare or teach us how the court system works, the politics involved, dealing with unruly judges, how to engage in discovery, drafting motions and briefs, dealing with erratic clients etc., all the big stuff that comprises law practice.
So whos side is greener? I don't know, I'm still new at this game, but I guess its human nature for me to think that the practice of medicine is a better way of life and greener than law. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, maybe it will be what I make of my legal career. I do perceive that doctors have more security though.
Just as an aside. One thing I do know about doctors, even if you are 30, 5'4, grey and balding, if you have Dr. before your name and MD after it you are an automatic chick magnet. I can't believe the women some of these doctors get that are many levels above them in attractivness. Tell women you are a lawyer and they really couldn't give a crap. We have to win them over in other ways. Doctors are definitly number one on the prestige scale.
|
|
