finish or bail?

[Vaseline]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I'm struggling with the same siutation right now but have not started medical school yet. Got accepted but thinking of taking antoher job and waiting 2 years to apply for PA school so I can save $ and not have debt. I really want a family and a balanced lifestyle

i think (hope) i made the right decision. it wasn't easy. doctors have job security and a good salary now, but that will likely deteriorate by the time you are looking for a job. the debt incurred is too significant. at this point, doc salaries need to be increasing, not decreasing, and sadly that is not the case.

 

[futuredoc71]

i think (hope) i made the right decision. it wasn't easy. doctors have job security and a good salary now, but that will likely deteriorate by the time you are looking for a job. the debt incurred is too significant. at this point, doc salaries need to be increasing, not decreasing, and sadly that is not the case.

what are you thinking of doing?

 

[Vaseline]

what are you thinking of doing?

i'm taking a sales job. won't get specifics. i should be able to earn about a ped's salary in 5-10 years. my lifestyle will be significantly better than a doc's too. i won't have the job security docs do, but i think it is the right move for me.

tbh, i would avoid medicine at all costs. especially in the current health care climate. i don't see things getting any easier or better for docs. tuition will continue to rise. salaries will probably drop a little bit and then plateau. if you are interested in primary care, please be smart and go NP or PA. APP, NP, and PA are the future of health care. only a matter of time before they creep into all fields. it's cheaper. at the end of the day, that is all anyone cares about, money. sad, but true.

 

[Perrotfish]

i'm taking a sales job. won't get specifics. i should be able to earn about a ped's salary in 5-10 years. my lifestyle will be significantly better than a doc's too. i won't have the job security docs do, but i think it is the right move for me.

tbh, i would avoid medicine at all costs. especially in the current health care climate. i don't see things getting any easier or better for docs. tuition will continue to rise. salaries will probably drop a little bit and then plateau. if you are interested in primary care, please be smart and go NP or PA. APP, NP, and PA are the future of health care. only a matter of time before they creep into all fields. it's cheaper. at the end of the day, that is all anyone cares about, money. sad, but true.

Why are you so sure that sales will work out? You are obviously betting that you will do better than at least 90% of salespeople. What makes you so sure you're good at this? Do you have previous sales experience?

BTW every time you talk about how easy sales will be I think of this:

 

[Vaseline]

Why are you so sure that sales will work out? You are obviously betting that you will do better than at least 90% of salespeople. What makes you so sure you're good at this? Do you have previous sales experience?

BTW every time you talk about how easy sales will be I think of this:

i'm not saying it will. but if i work as hard in sales as i did in med school, i think i will be fine.

Why are you so sure that sales will work out? You are obviously betting that you will do better than at least 90% of salespeople. What makes you so sure you're good at this? Do you have previous sales experience?

BTW every time you talk about how easy sales will be I think of this:

sales will be tough. i'll concede that. it may not work out. that is ok. i'm just getting out of medicine bc i know that ship is sinking fast.

 

[Perrotfish]

sales will be tough. i'll concede that. it may not work out. that is ok. i'm just getting out of medicine bc i know that ship is sinking fast.

On the one hand you have a field with a known median lifetime earnings of about 2 million, and a large percentage of people don't sustain the career to even get the 2 million. You have a lot of optimism that that field will work out for you

On the other hand you have a field with a current median lifetime earnings of about 6 million (5 million after debt) in which 90% of matriculants sustain a career. You are sure that that field is 'sinking fast'.

I think you might be overestimating your ability to predict the future of the healthcare sector. Have you officially made this decision yet?

Anyway good luck, whatever you choose to do. If you do go with sales I hope you'll check back in in a year. And in 5.

 

[DokterMom]

Too much Faux News and not enough critical thinking. With an aging population, the demand for physicians is unlikely to fall, and since when have Americans demanded less than the most-qualified physicians and most-advanced medical technology? Sure, we don't want to pay for it - who would? And yet we do, over and over, year in and year out. Yes, medical school costs a lot, and students take on enormous debt to attend. And yet there's still many more waiting in line for the chance to become a doctor and fork over those tuition dollars.

Will the medical landscape change? Certainly. How? In ways that are unknown to all of us -- including you. I don't know why you feel such certainty that medical incomes are going down the drain.

Question that assumption, because I don't think it's any more well-founded than many of Faux's other outrageous assertions.

 

[jl lin]

If you think you'd prefer being a salesperson (selling to and being generally perceived as less capable than people who are now your peers) to being a doctor, then sure, throw away that 'golden ticket' you've worked so hard for.

But do consider that a career in sales is about personality and persistence, not intelligence or ability, and that all the money in the world won't give you the same type of satisfaction you could get saving lives. Sure, there's less debt. But there's also a District Sales Manager (or whatever they call them) breathing down you neck if you fail to make your sales quotas or are late with your sales reports. There's dubious, unproven, overpriced or even dangerous products you're expected to peddle in addition to the solid ones. There are tushes to kiss and apples to polish, and everywhere giving the kinds of respect you could be receiving instead...

They couldn't pay me enough to do that! (And 65K is nowhere near enough for you to seriously consider.)

I agree with you on the whole, but does not the underscored also occur in medicine/healthcare? Personality and persistence as well as tolerance can be huge factors in medicine/hc. Sure, it's not to the same degree overall, but I would be lying if I said I didn't see it in HC on ALL levels. And so many places in HC anymore require that you are given personality tests and meet certain "metrics" for positions.

To your point, however, I think medicine, ideally, calls for a more genuinely caring kind of personality. It's important to stay interested in the science and art of what you do, as well as the patients and families. I think I would lose interest in pure sales in no time. Perhaps it depends upon how much I believed in the product/s and how much teaching goes along with it.

Excessive tush-kissing is w/o a doubt, quite odious. Yet some people are amazing at it. So much so, that they don't even know it as anything different from normal--and they get to the brass ring by such talents.

 

[Mad Jack]

This is why you don't ask these types of questions on SDN, you get people thinking you're going to make the same base salary for 20 years

After adjusting for inflation, they might very well be making the same salary for 20 years. Not everyone gets promoted- the majority are grunts for life, watching inflation chip away at their wages.

 

[eteshoe]

I guess you've chosen to bail. That is your decision. Good luck with your endeavors.