I agree with the fact that I also have more time in medical school than I did while I was working, but that is really not the point. I was also paid when I was working. Medical school IS a personal and financial sacrifice. My finances are a freaking disaster (as is the case with anyone who isn't fully funded). It is true that some people overplay some of the financial hardships that people in medicine face, but you are most assuredly doing the opposite.
We'll just have to disagree. I also worked before med school and I sacrified a lot financially to do it. I don't consider it a personal sacrifice. I enjoy it. I have more flexibility. I spend a lot of time learning. Seems better than most people's jobs. The first two years you can sleep late most days, for pete's sake.
I agree that people in primary care and low paying specialties can claim a financial sacrifice, but (and I know you're big on choice), they either choose primary care or were forced into it because their records weren't good enough for something else. People in most specialties can make very good incomes and most, even if they worked beforehand, are not making a financial sacrifice. They're earning more than they would in anything else.
Most people on SDN are not receiving large salaries. Most of us are in the MINIMUM 7-11 years of no to low pay training that is MANDATORY to practice medicine in different medical specialities.
Well, I know, but they will make good salaries. Obviously if the career was residency, there would be reasons to complain to no end.
And I wish people would stop treating residency training as though it was still school. Residents practice medicine. They are still training, true, but just in the way that a young lawyer at a big firm is still in trainin. Actually residents get responsibility faster than many lawyers at large firms. So it's only different in being a bit more formalized system and of course lawyers get paid much better during training. Residents should get paid more.
We are not all highly altruistic, as you have pointed out. I was pointing out that you seemed to think that we all should be.
I don't think they should be altruistic.
In this era of declining reimburesemts and PROGRESSIVE government intrustion, it is not unreasonable to worry that the previous lifestyle and stability of the medical profession is no indicator of future results. When I graduate, I will be paying $2,000/month for 15 years to break even on my debts. I will also be paying taxes on that money, meaning that I will have to earn an extra $30,000-$35,000/year before I can even begin to pay my own expenses. So yes, I think that not worrying about finance at this point, along with not worrying about the impact of EMTALA, would be flushing my financial stability down the toilet. I do not want a handout or sympathy. What I want is to know that I will actually be paid a market wage for the highly skilled services that I will be providing, without government interference through the legislature and the legal system running me into the ground.
Understandable that you would worry about this, but it's pretty unlikely you won't earn a good wage. Specialty salaries have barely changed in the last 15-20 years, and if anything, there's a projected shortage of doctors.
Your other quote about lifestyle of other professionals is also false. I know many people in business and law that set their schedules however they want. I have an uncle who did quite well working out of his car at his leisure. Some have it easier, and some have it harder. This is NO different than medicine.
Well, we'll have to disagree. Medicine is most assuredly not like business and law in this regard. How can a typical business person work part-time? Only self-employed businessmen with a client-service model (e.g. consultants) easily can do this. An associate VP of company X can't say to his superiors "you know, I'd like to be part-time." It just won't be possible. Personally, I've known a lot more doctors to work part-time--and certainly work part-time and still earn a good living.
This is the difference. Most doctors can set up a schedule to work part-time if they plan in advance, because a huge number have the client (patient) service model. And that is definitely true if they choose a specialty accordingly. Only a small subset of businesspeople and lawyers use a model that makes this possible.
I don't think that doctors have an easy time. Clearly not. I am merely trying to counter the culture among young doctors, exemplified by SDN, of victimization and persecution. You obviously know a lot more about business than the average med student. But the typical cultural mindset is to feel that going into medicine was akin to becoming a monk, and feel, without knowing much about other fields, that oh it's so easy in other fields. There's no stress or hard work. Everyone just works 35 hrs a week and collects their 200k paycheck.
There was one-time someone said that any MD/PhD student could become a Fortune 500 CEO if they had gone into business. I mean people just don't have a clue. They amplify all the difficulties in medicine and dismiss all the stress and challenges in other fields.
