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goldy120

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Brain is scattering and I'm dying for opinions even though the decision will be ultimately left for me...

So I love love love emergency medicine. I'm currently an EMT, and have wanted to practice it since highschool. Only problem is I know the hours can be hectic so it's going to bust time that I'd love to spend with my family in the future (I'm a very family orietated person) I don't want to make my husband miserable and have a loose relationship with my children because work is in the way..

On the other hand I have the option to go into dentistry.. which intrigues me but it doesn't pull me like emergency medicine does. But the life style is, from what I heard, 100x better.

Both pay pretty well so I'm not too caught up in the money

Both have different hardships pertaining to the schooling so I'm not too caught up in it as well but Medicine will be a longer route, again obscuring a decent lifestyle until my 20s which I'm aware of that risk and deal with it if it came Down to it

So I gues the question is would you follow what you love with a lot of consequences or SETTLE for a career choice for the rest of you life but have a good comfy life because of it

Thanks in advance.

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If you chose to go into EM, then med school and residency will be the hardest part. And just because you got into medical school, doesn't guarantee you get an EM residency. But if you do get to that point, once you finish your lifestyle is up to you. If you want to work in a Level 1 trauma center and see the toughest cases, you can chose to do that. But if after some time you want more time with family - you can just switch to working in an urgent care center 4 days a week, 9-5.
 
The lifestyle as an Emergency Physician is great. Many places do 14 twelve hour shifts a month. You can take a week or two off at a time as part of your schedule on top of vacation. Pays very well. No call, and you can leave work at work. What's not to love? If you want to work banker's hours, then maybe it's not for you. Don't want to work that much... then you can work less no matter the specialty. Really, you can do what you want, you just have to live with the pay.
 
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It's just as easy for physician trained in outpatient medicine to have a private practice. Obviously, EM is hospital/ED based, but I'd be surprised if many general dentists in private practice earn more than many EM physicians working in the ED. If it's all based on the earning potential, I think that it's hard to make an argument that general dentistry would be a better choice than EM. Don't forget, there's more to the decision than money.

I think the whole decision as a premed/pre-dental student doesn't really make sense though. It's not dentist vs EM, it's dental school vs medical school at this level. Medical school really affords you a more diverse set of options, but does not guarantee you can do EM at all.
 
Brain is scattering and I'm dying for opinions even though the decision will be ultimately left for me...

So I love love love emergency medicine. I'm currently an EMT, and have wanted to practice it since highschool. Only problem is I know the hours can be hectic so it's going to bust time that I'd love to spend with my family in the future (I'm a very family orietated person) I don't want to make my husband miserable and have a loose relationship with my children because work is in the way..

On the other hand I have the option to go into dentistry.. which intrigues me but it doesn't pull me like emergency medicine does. But the life style is, from what I heard, 100x better.

Both pay pretty well so I'm not too caught up in the money

Both have different hardships pertaining to the schooling so I'm not too caught up in it as well but Medicine will be a longer route, again obscuring a decent lifestyle until my 20s which I'm aware of that risk and deal with it if it came Down to it

So I gues the question is would you follow what you love with a lot of consequences or SETTLE for a career choice for the rest of you life but have a good comfy life because of it

Thanks in advance.


Im a dentist and I've done an hospital based residency in a trauma one center. My wife is an internist and finishing up residency. I would look at debt and the cost of attendance to be a main factor. You get a better ROI with medicine than with dentistry right now. Dentistry is a profession in transition. Pay can be similar in certain areas. A lot of guys I know are making 150k+ depending on where they work. Right now medicine is doing well with generalist making 220k and up. The difference is the PSLF. Look it up, its the largest back door scholarship to date. All loans forgiven after 10 years and a residency counts towards those years. To make a comparable income as a physician, dentist need to work in the private sector and with that they can not get loan forgiveness. So medicine wins hands down. Plus you can do much more with an M.D. degree than with a D.D.S. once you get bored of medicine/dentistry. Also, most of dental residency are mostly school based and not hospital based thus you have to take out tuition/loans for those programs and incur more debt unlike medicine which is PAID residency. You can find good work life balance in medicine as well. Don't believe the hype, medicine wins hands down and most departments. Its not 2002 no more.
 
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