- Joined
- Jun 24, 2019
- Messages
- 791
- Reaction score
- 886
Let me clarify. You get in the profession to help people, and in order to do so you sacrifice at least 7 years of your life into medicine. After that, you're dealing with the public image of "money hungry doctors looking to get every dollar they can get", people who will blame the healthcare crisis on doctor's salaries (when in reality, the doctor salaries are ~ 18 percent, and half of that is for malpractice etc.). You deal with NP's and PA advocacy groups pushing for independence when they are half as trained as you utilizing the things I just mentioned above just so they can get more applicants and profit off of their NP's and PA schools. You have to deal with stress of trying to be "perfect", and if you aren't "perfect" the public and patients will come after you much more fiercely than any other profession. You're automatically thrust into positions of leadership in the community and are held to a higher standard than others. It's ridiculous. There was once a time when practicing medicine was the most respectful thing you could do, but even now, with NP schools taking in anyone off the street, the practice of medicine itself is being devalued. With all that being said, medicine is still easily the best profession in america in terms of the impact you make in peoples lives and its impossible to get that sense of accomplishment from any other profession.