3 advantages and disadvantages of 1. primary care docs and 2. Specialists

[BjOrKnRaDiOhEaD]

hey everyone

wanted to hear what peopple think are the top three advantages and disadvantages for being a primary care doctor versus a specialist!

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[ocean11]

1) Well one thing is that as a primary care physician (especially family practitioner) you aren't so reliant on external references.

2) In addition, you get to interact with everyone and see all different kinds of problems, keeping you 'up-to-date'/maintaining your medical knowledge on most current diseases (instead of just say.... cardiovascular problems).

1) as for disadavantages, I suppose most people would say "You don't get paid as much", for me however, I'd still rather go into family practice as I truly want to interact/help the entire community + I think making 120,000$ a year is more than enough. Heck I'd even do it for half of that (honest!!).

2) (as one med school student told me) One has to be 'a jack of all trades' and most people preffer to have an 'expert' opinion in a specific area that interests them.

 

[elias514]

"Jack of all trades" is somewhat of an overstatement for primary care docs. They're trained to deal with a wide variety of health care scenarios--family practitioners being the extreme example of this--but they aren't experts in any given area. For instance, an OB-GYN is much more qualified to deliver babies than a family doc, simply because the former's training is considerably more thorough regarding child labor. For normal deliveries a family doc would probably do just fine, but any complications could pose a serious challenge, one that exceeds the scope of the doc's knowledge and training.

But I guess that's why there are referrals, right?

 

[elias514]

3 advantages for primary care docs:
1. Continuity of care and development of long-term relationships with patients
2. Variety of clinical presentations
3. Opportunities to graduate debt-free from medical school

3 disadvantages for primary care docs:
1. Difficulty associated with developing expertise in a given area (e.g., obstetrics) because of the need to stay abreast of a wide variety of medical developments--i.e., a diversified knowledge base that lacks depth
2. Reimbursement rates are considerably less than those of specialists, particularly specialists with a procedural orientation (as opposed to a cognitive bent); in effect, primary care docs, especially internists, have to work hard for less money. Internists work, on average, 58 hours a week and the median income is $150,000/yr. In contrast, otolaryngologists work, on average, 53 hrs/wk and the median compensation for all physicians in this specialty is $253,971/yr. That's a significant difference.
3. Trend of dealing with chronically ill patients who never really improve. If you're going into medicine to "fix" health problems, primary care probably isn't a good choice.

3 advantages for specialists:
1. The median income for specialists is considerably higher than that of primary care docs, which means that specialists get paid more to do less. Even so, specialists tend to work as many or more hours than generalists.
2. The opportunity to develop expertise in a given area (e.g., microvascular surgery)
3. The ability to treat patients and see immediate results (i.e., "curative intervention")

3 disadvantages for specialists:
1. High malpractice liability insurance and constant threat of lawsuits forces many specialists to practice defensive medicine
2. Little or no continuity of care (some people might perceive this as an advantage)
3. Long and rigorous postgraduate training, esp. surgery and surgical subspecialties

 

[jlee9531]

advantages:

you are the first line of defense in fighting common illness so you make more of a "direct" impact.

more opportunity to form relationships and bonds with patients and their families.


disadvantages:

generally worse "hours"

generally lower pay