| Topic Name: |
life as a physician |
| Message Name: |
MD's delude themselves |
| Date Posted: |
02/24/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
I've been fairly amused by this thread. My daughter, who has just been accepted to med-school, sent me a link to the Vault boards and I find the views expressed here passionate if not misguided.
Physicians make good money. That is not a secret and the most idiotic investigator will uncover this fact without a huge expense of energy. The original poster, the young man who is wondering if he had a shot of landing a surgical residency here in the US should go for it, but he should also be ready for a changing landscape. Medicine in the US IS changing and has been for quite a while now.
That said, I've tried to dissuade my own daughter from entering the medical field since she first began to voice a serious interest (junior high school. I finished my surgical residency in 1973. Although I have been a bit more insulated from managed health-care than my primary care colleagues, I will say to you all what I say to my daughter. "Medicine is a pain in the ass. If you think of the profession in a rosy idealistic way then you had better wake-up!" But the pain is worth it if you're in it for the right reasons.
My advice to my daughter was FATHERLY advice. Not wishing her to have to go through what I went through at the start of my career, the sadistic rite of passage called an internship and all that entails, and wanting to spare her the constant battles with insurance, insurance, insurance...but when it was all said and done, she repeated to me essentially what I repeated to my father (also a physician). She said that she understands, but that she feels that she can make a difference, and medicine is the best way to allow her that.
I couldn't argue with her.
I enjoy a large income with great job security, an ever growing, multi-office practice, and a beautiful family. I enjoy the prestige, hate the hours, but love the difference that I have made in peoples lives. I'm in ortho and see patients from age six with a broken arm to age 75 with a broken hip. I've never viewed any of my patients as a commodity. This is perhaps the core danger of managed health care and the battle for the soul of what we know as the practice of medicine. I share Karen's view that medicine in the US will never be socialized. Pressure from carriers increased scrutiny of billing, etc... well, that's another thread all together.
But if you wind up an MD for 30+ years and you' aren't careful your daughter may just be smart enough to see that all the crap you complain about is really what you live for, and in the end it's worth it.
The money isn't too shabby either. Really. And a physician will never complain about that.
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| Message: |
I think when you are sitting in a position where the floor salary is $130K or higher if you are in a specialty, you forget that (or maybe never have known) that there is no floor for MBA's. If there is a floor, it might be something as low as $40-50K. When you view it that way, $130-$220K or whatever doesn't seem so bad.
The vast majority of the people I know who go into medicine do it because its stable, good money with a lot of prestige. Their parents tell them to do it, and these are often people who are speaking from long experience who know how difficult it is to make it big in other professions.
I think a lot of doctors mistakenly think that making it into med school and finishing the rigorous training means that they could have been huge successes in other fields, like business. This is definitely not the case. It may take a while, but eventually you'll discover that success in business is not about grinding and intellectual horsepower. It's more intangible, salesmenship, creativity, luck, connections. A lot of the most successful businessmen are not smart or hardworking, but have something else. Take our President, a man who intentionally works moderate hours but has been very successful.
The other myth is that doctors work a lot more than anyone else. If you are an investment banker, lawyer, high-level exec, etc... or a well-paid footsoldier in any of these professions, you are definitely expected to work 60+ hours per week just to keep your job, and have to keep it for, well, indefinitely. There is no equivalent of the 3 12-hour shift per week, ER physician, pulling in $200K in any other field.
Medicine can still provide a great life and that's why people are still breaking down the doors, trying to get into the field. If you don't want to work insane hours, don't become a surgeon. People become opthamologists, radiologists, dermatologists, etc... specifically for great lifestyle, high pay. It's not like all doctors work that hard.
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