Anyone else not interested in being a great physician?

[underAchiever]

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I stand corrected on the "all-or-none affair", too. I guess that works better for neurons then for people in medicine, in which there are various degrees of involvment and everybody decides their own level and it is preusmptuos of me to judge that level.

 

[southbelle]

Well, I don't think her OP was troll worthy. But doing the search (as recommended), I dug up this from southbelle:

"I've been accepted to 7 different schools. Three in the top 10. Three more ranked between #11-20, and an unranked but cheap school, an instate school. I've just been informed that I've recieved a scholarship that will pay for almost 80% of my tutition over 4 years at this state school."

And this:

"Yes I am going to mcg meanderson. It's the only school I applied to. It's not all about stats at MCG. That's just a small part of the picture. At MCG clinical experience means a lot more than stats. They love to see lots of shadowing and lots of work in healthcare. If you have decent stats and didn't get an acceptance letter, it's because your clinical experience and shadowing experience was not impressive."

F---ing lame.

hehe. Well the second post there was real and is pretty much in accordance with this thread, hence the southeastern state school and only applying to one school. That's consistent. The first was a parody playing around with some of the gunners who are obsessed with getting into a top 10 school. If it offended anyone I apologize.

 

[southbelle]

Well it is a good thing Southbelle didn't espouse her true views during her interviews. That is all I have to say.

Also if you are thinking about good hours with no procedures consider psych.

Psych also actually sounds pretty good, but only under the right circumstances. I would want to do only med. maintenance. No emphasis on long psychotherapy sessions. Still, there would be some less than cooperative patients, especially when doing a psych residency. I really don't think anything beats occ medicine. Check this out:

http://www.reidhosp.com/services/occupational_medicine.html

Services include:

Workplace Injury/illness care
Substance abuse testing /training
Medical Review Officer services
Wellness services
Pulmonary function testing
Audiometric testing
IOSHA & OSHA compliance programs
DOT certification & recertification exams
Pre-placement post-offer exams
Vaccinations
Fitness for duty & independent medical exams

Some physicals, setting up drug testing protocol, setting up a wellness program, making sure OSHA compliance is met, do a few vaccinations, a few more physicals, take bloodwork to make sure people are fit to be hired. Can it get any better?

 

[TRUE]

No emphasis on long psychotherapy sessions.

God forbid you actually have to do some heavy work (by sitting in a chair for a few hours a day)!!!

This whole thread is a joke. I can only assume for my own sake that what the OP wrote was a farce, and that there aren't really people out there who only want to do a "satisfactory" job. I hope it's ok with Joe Shmo that he can "satisfactorially" walk down the hallway because you only did a "satisfactory" job.

Medicine is not about satisfactory. It's about excellence. If you can't handle that, get the hell out. And no, for all of you wondering, I'm not a gunner in the least (check my mdapplicants profile). I just have enough common decency to know that I'm responsible for the health of people who come to me with their medical problems and I have to do the BEST I can to help them. Satisfactory in the medical world doesn't cut it.

Has nothing to do with being a gunner, as many of you suggest too. Her view is not anti-gunner; it's anti-medicine.

 

[southbelle]

God forbid you actually have to do some heavy work (by sitting in a chair for a few hours a day)!!!

This whole thread is a joke. I can only assume for my own sake that what the OP wrote was a farce, and that there aren't really people out there who only want to do a "satisfactory" job. I hope it's ok with Joe Shmo that he can "satisfactorially" walk down the hallway because you only did a "satisfactory" job.

Medicine is not about satisfactory. It's about excellence. If you can't handle that, get the hell out. And no, for all of you wondering, I'm not a gunner in the least (check my mdapplicants profile). I just have enough common decency to know that I'm responsible for the health of people who come to me with their medical problems and I have to do the BEST I can to help them. Satisfactory in the medical world doesn't cut it.

Has nothing to do with being a gunner, as many of you suggest too. Her view is not anti-gunner; it's anti-medicine.

I would argue that medicine is about meeting the requirements of those who you are working for, usually patients. And the definition of 'satisfactory' is to meet requirements. Those requirements vary by specialty of course.

Of course I'm responsible for the healthcare of others. If I'm working as a community surgical pathologist, then I'm going to read the abnormal paps that the cytotech gives me accurately and not glance over them and sign them off as normal. That's what satisfactory performance is. If I'm working in occupational medicine for a large corportation doing pre-employment drug testing and physicals then I'll make sure the lab is run smoothly and physicals are done appropriately. That's what a satisfactory performance is.

I'm just not into the idea that medicine is so different than every other field. Plemty of insurance adjusters at Progressive work hard and do a satisfactory job. Yet many of this board view 95% of the general population as just working 'some job' while those who have sweat blood for years get the opportunity to pursue endless intellectual and emotional rewards of medicine. It's just insulting to the 98% or so of college students who choose not to go to medical school, most of whom do so by their own choice.

 

[skypilot]

I think it is ok to do a very good job for only 40 hours per week and then spend the rest of your time doing a very good job in other aspects of your life like raising children, taking care of your personal life, etc. Many of the docs that decide to devote 100% of their life to medicine end up as out of balance wackos that I would not want treating me anyway.

 

[SunnyS81]

I didn't have a chance to read through through all the comments, but the thread seems to have 2 different groups of people that will never see eye to eye.

All I want to say is...

1) I want to encourage SouthBelle to talk to some residents including PM&R. If there are really that few specialties that you are interested in, it is worth checking out. I didn't suggest NP and PA (or heck CRNA's who make $100k+ starting and work 40 hrs/wk....even in academic settings) because it was the easiest, but because it might be a CAREER that might interest you more.
2) You said that the lowest paid doctors get paid $140k. You might want to check your facts on that. I know peds and IM docs in places making $80k/year. While $120k might be a good average for primary care docs, $140k is a bit high for most G.P.'s.
3) It seems like most your observations about work hours come from being a patient or being with famiy members who are at hospitals. Most IM docs I know round after they leave their offices, on their way home, which is why you see some of them at 7-8pm. The longer hours you work, the more you make in private practice, so they are just trying to make a few bucks more. If you want to take a pay cut, you can work less too (many female attendings here only work 1/2 time).
4) Each person has their own reasons for entering medicine. Typically there is an direct relationship between hours worked/length of residency/difficulty of matching and pay. I know when PM&R presented to us their field they mentioned you can make it what you want to be. If you just do epidurals all day, you can make a lot, but if you do other stuff, you'll make less. When you work for yourself, you can take more vacation, work fewer hours, and all those things that you consider "lifestyle" considerations, but they will just cost you money...you'll make less because you'll be seeing fewer patients. Private practice doctors (since you don't seem want to go into academia) dictate their own salaries and are eantrapenuer's (sp?). If you want 20 wks of vacation per year, you can do that, but don't expect a $200k salary from it.

Good luck getting through the next 8 years....

 

[OmahaMX80]

I've read a lot of the posts for this thread and I see both perspectives. I think it's cool that southbelle can be honest about what she thinks. I also think it's bad form to use teaching as a slam. My sister is going to school to be a teacher and frankly if the teaching profession (and yes, it is a profession) received more of the prestige and gratitude it is due, the world would be better for it, not to mention this country. I don't think anyone goes into an occupation with the notion that it is going to rule his or her individual life. Granted, medicine is more like a vocation than an occupation, but at the center of medicine is healing. And to be a good healer, it seems like you'd need certain social skills and perspectives to be able to relate and advise your patients in ways that are at times beyond clinical medicine. I think pursuing outside interests, hanging with friends, and having a life, actually makes a person a BETTER doctor. And I've met plenty of medical students who agree. I think it is sad that the whole premedicine culture promotes this horrible idea that medicine is going to be the life vampire sucking away everything that makes life worth living. And I think it's even more sad that there are people out there who seem to feel it's a requirement that you not have fun or a life while pursuing your goals. It is possible to do both... ask around if you don't believe me.

 

[southbelle]

.
2) You said that the lowest paid doctors get paid $140k. You might want to check your facts on that. I know peds and IM docs in places making $80k/year. While $120k might be a good average for primary care docs, $140k is a bit high for most G.P.'s.
.

You're right that the lowest paid doctors in the lowest fields might make less than 140k, but the lowest average salary for any field is about 150k. 140k isn't high at all for most GP's. The national average according to the AMA is 147k. National average for pm&R is closer to 185k. The only PA's/NP's who are making anything close to 185k is CRNA's. And those are top earning crna's making ~180k. The proper comparison would be a top 20th percentile crna(160k) to a top 20th percentile PM&R physician(245k).

But physicians have told me this is dependent on where you are practicing. I like where I'm at now, and primary care fields in the 40 mile radius within where I live do better than the average. It's not a popular place to practice or live apparently so this helps the supply/demand side, and to top it off the payer mix isn't all that bad apparently. Of course this may very well change in the next ten years.

I understand where the suggestion to do PA/NP is coming from, but I'm not anywhere near prepared to enter NP school. I'd be finishing up my occupational med residency or pm&R residency by the time I was finishing up NP training. I'm sure there will be a few PA's and NP's who make more than I will as an occupational medicine physician or PM&R doc or whatever, but the overall trend is for pm&R physicians to make more than twice as much as allied health professionals with graduate degrees.

 

[cgt3477]

I don't want to sacrifice myself to my career completely, anyway. I want a family. Three kids. Vacation time. A good ole dog and some time to toss a frisbee.

i agree with freaker...that's why I chose dentistry (but with several dogs and only 2 kids) 😀