graduating without step 2

Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine
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jakeislove said:
Maybe?!

Sorry, my impulse control failed. 🙂
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Haha, I dunno, it just baffles me how I keep reading about doctors being the most burned out of any profession and the suicide rate among physicians being so high, and yet people are pouring in, including from other professions. There is a disconnect somewhere.
 
chipwhitley said:
I found out today that two brilliant friends of mine who were doing really well in engineering are quitting to go to med school. This is really disheartening. Maybe medicine is the best it gets?
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Grass is always greener on the other side. From their perspective, you would be the one who spent a lot of money and time to go through the intense medical school training, but is still opting to drop medicine to do something else. "Wow, is medicine so bad that he's choosing not to practice it after 4 years of medical school?"

People who haven't been through this route tend to view this profession as a "guaranteed 200k and up with awesome job security. Those damn doctors make too much money."
 
MU420 said:
Grass is always greener on the other side. From their perspective, you would be the one who spent a lot of money and time to go through the intense medical school training, but is still opting to drop medicine to do something else. "Wow, is medicine so bad that he's choosing not to practice it after 4 years of medical school?"

People who haven't been through this route tend to view this profession as a "guaranteed 200k and up with awesome job security. Those damn doctors make too much money."
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That's true. Grass is always greener on the other side, and you don't really know what a job is like until you've actually had it. But it still baffles me that a profession with so much press about how physicians are burned out and miserable manages to attract increasing numbers of people, including people like my friends who already had a good stable job making plenty of money, whereas a story like mine of going the other way is incredibly rare.
 
chipwhitley said:
Haha, I dunno, it just baffles me how I keep reading about doctors being the most burned out of any profession and the suicide rate among physicians being so high, and yet people are pouring in, including from other professions. There is a disconnect somewhere.
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I am no expert, but economic security might have a lot to do with it... There other careers out there that are good, but when there is an economic downturn, many of these people tend loose their jobs... For instance, engineering is a good career, but it hard to find many engineers making 120k+/year even after 10 years of experience... I used to worked with someone whose daughter got an engineering degree from MIT and the best job offer she got was in the 70k/year... Even that was a very good salary for a 23 years old, I was kind of shocked because I thought an engineering degree from MIT should get someone 100k/year minimum... On the other, as physician, you have the potential to make 200k+/year right out of school... I know you spend more time in school and there considerable amount of debt involved; however, most people tend to overlook that aspect and others for some reason. At the end of the day, I think it's a 'wash' specially for physicians who are doing primary care except for the job security aspect. For physician that are in lucrative specialties (Ortho, Gas, Rad, Uro etc...), it's a better deal finically if you can deal with all the BS the bureaucrats put in front of you.
 
chipwhitley said:
That's true. Grass is always greener on the other side, and you don't really know what a job is like until you've actually had it. But it still baffles me that a profession with so much press about how physicians are burned out and miserable manages to attract increasing numbers of people, including people like my friends who already had a good stable job making plenty of money, whereas a story like mine of going the other way is incredibly rare.
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Your story is incredibly rare... I saw someone suggested preventive medicine... Maybe you can give that a look. GL in whatever you do!
 
chipwhitley said:
Haha, I dunno, it just baffles me how I keep reading about doctors being the most burned out of any profession and the suicide rate among physicians being so high, and yet people are pouring in, including from other professions. There is a disconnect somewhere.
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I'd be bored with a traditional 'job'.
 
chipwhitley said:
I found out today that two brilliant friends of mine who were doing really well in engineering are quitting to go to med school. This is really disheartening. Maybe medicine is the best it gets?
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I wouldn't go based off of other people's plans. They don't have clairvoyance about med school.
 
Maybe I have a weird perspective because I'm in Silicon Valley, and the ethos here is very much about trying new things, taking positive risks, and looking for change, but leaving medical school seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me if there is something useful and reasonable you want to do more.

Students sometimes leave in the middle to start companies or work for companies, do full time research, etc. Depending on what they are doing, it can be more beneficial to themselves and/or society than a career practicing medicine.

It's not med school, but Jim Reese dropped out of his neurosurgery residency program (or was sort of pushed out) to play with computers and went to be the 18th employee for a tiny weird company with a weird name: Google. I'm sure almost everyone on SDN would have said he was crazy at the time. He just liked playing with computers more than being a doctor.

You also seldom are really closing a door if you are doing a pro social thing wherein you excel. You are instead opening up new opportunities, ones which you likely don't even know about yet.
 
alamo4 said:
Maybe I have a weird perspective because I'm in Silicon Valley, and the ethos here is very much about trying new things, taking positive risks, and looking for change, but leaving medical school seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me if there is something useful and reasonable you want to do more.

Students sometimes leave in the middle to start companies or work for companies, do full time research, etc. Depending on what they are doing, it can be more beneficial to themselves and/or society than a career practicing medicine.

It's not med school, but Jim Reese dropped out of his neurosurgery residency program (or was sort of pushed out) to play with computers and went to be the 18th employee for a tiny weird company with a weird name: Google. I'm sure almost everyone on SDN would have said he was crazy at the time. He just liked playing with computers more than being a doctor.

You also seldom are really closing a door if you are doing a pro social thing wherein you excel. You are instead opening up new opportunities, ones which you likely don't even know about yet.
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For every dropout success story, there are probably thousands of dropout failures. You just don't hear about them. Sure it sounds great, drop out and try new things and follow your passions. But when you're $200k+ in debt, it's probably not the smartest idea.
 
alamo4 said:
Maybe I have a weird perspective because I'm in Silicon Valley, and the ethos here is very much about trying new things, taking positive risks, and looking for change, but leaving medical school seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me if there is something useful and reasonable you want to do more.

Students sometimes leave in the middle to start companies or work for companies, do full time research, etc. Depending on what they are doing, it can be more beneficial to themselves and/or society than a career practicing medicine.

It's not med school, but Jim Reese dropped out of his neurosurgery residency program (or was sort of pushed out) to play with computers and went to be the 18th employee for a tiny weird company with a weird name: Google. I'm sure almost everyone on SDN would have said he was crazy at the time. He just liked playing with computers more than being a doctor.

You also seldom are really closing a door if you are doing a pro social thing wherein you excel. You are instead opening up new opportunities, ones which you likely don't even know about yet.
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https://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-reese/80/25/44a
Chief Operations Engineer and Head Neurosurgeon lol!
 
ChEMD said:
For every dropout success story, there are probably thousands of dropout failures. You just don't hear about them. Sure it sounds great, drop out and try new things and follow your passions. But when you're $200k+ in debt, it's probably not the smartest idea.
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I'm not sure if this is really a problem. I'd rather try something I really wanted to and fail, then stick with something that makes my life miserable because I'm afraid of failure -- debt and all.

I think my situation is a bit different because I'm not actually dropping out of anything. I'm just not applying to residency. I still plan to graduate from medical school. I'm still eligible to apply to residency for 3 years if things don't work out.
 
chipwhitley said:
So I just spoke to the dean of my school, and he advised me that I won't be able to graduate without Step 2 CK. He also told me that I have to take it by the 1st of october, or I will not be allowed to continue 4th year - I will have to take a leave of absence and take the test, pushing graduation back by a year, or I'll have to drop out, not being able to receive my MD. That leaves me just a little over a week to study for and pass this test, which I may be able to do, but it's going to be tough, especially given that I haven't even signed up, and there are no spots open to take it at this point. I don't understand why I would have to abide by the October 1st deadline as my understanding was that deadline was meant for students who are entering the match. If I'm not entering the match, why should it matter when I take the test as long as I'm able to pass it by the time of graduation?

I feel like they are just upset with me because I'm not going into the match and trying to make my life difficult.

If anybody has any thoughts that would help me deal with this situation, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.
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I have a great idea. I should have mentioned it to you before. Let's switch identities. You get a 4yr bachelors in engineering from a very good school from me, and then you can just do 2 yrs of a masters in whatever you want. And I get your med school diploma. Are your scores attached to your USMLE ID any good?
 
samuelp said:
I have a great idea. I should have mentioned it to you before. Let's switch identities. You get a 4yr bachelors in engineering from a very good school from me, and then you can just do 2 yrs of a masters in whatever you want. And I get your med school diploma. Are your scores attached to your USMLE ID any good?
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This might work, but I'm gonna need to know a lot more about you lol.
 
ChEMD said:
For every dropout success story, there are probably thousands of dropout failures. You just don't hear about them. Sure it sounds great, drop out and try new things and follow your passions. But when you're $200k+ in debt, it's probably not the smartest idea.
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Yes, I understand this bias. However, of the two friends who have dropped out of medical school. One who has been out a little over a year and his company has just received over $7 million on venture capital. Another left after first year to do some some consulting type stuff, and two years later is apparently doing quite well financially. They each had a plan, but took a bit of a risk.

Of course not everyone has those options, but not everyone looks for them either.

Five years of residency salary vs a good industry job, the latter can pay off the loans faster. Industry here could be business, technology, etc. If you work for a finance type company, depending on how well the company does that year, you may be able to take a big bite of your loans with your yearly bonus.

I'm not saying that all exit strategies are the same, but technology and business for example can address financial problems. Other choices might address other personal needs for fulfillment, time off, outdoors time, or whatever floats your boat.

Likely someone who was able to focus a lot of energy and overcome obstacles and make if into medical school, can likely do that again in other areas.

Some things are also a lot easier in other fields. Only medicine and the government are so obsessed with particular educational milestones and credentials. In business in technology, it's typically (when things are going well) much more about what you can do and how hard you hustle (and admittedly who you know and how well you schmooze). That means you don't have to wait around earning your stripes as much. You can advance more rapidly.

Anyway, I'm not saying that everyone who drops out of residency or medical school is going to be rich and famous. However, I'm guessing there are not many dropout doctors standing in the soup line. I bet, like the handful I know, they go do something interesting and useful and do a good job. We're not talking about dropping out of high school here, at crux it was originally about not doing residency. Just talking about research alone, I know many top researchers who never did residency. I'm glad they do their thing, and they seem very happy.

I am not trying to give advice, just raise the point that I know several people who started medical school, either haven't finished, didn't do residency, or did residency and then rapidly did not practice, and none of them are unhappy or poor.
 
chipwhitley said:
Haha, I dunno, it just baffles me how I keep reading about doctors being the most burned out of any profession and the suicide rate among physicians being so high, and yet people are pouring in, including from other professions. There is a disconnect somewhere.
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Yes and a lot of it is reputation based, not necessarily reality based.
 
DermViser said:
Yes and a lot of it is reputation based, not necessarily reality based.
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This is very true. I talked in more detail to one of my engineering friends who's quitting to go to med school last night, and it turns out he knows close to nothing about what a doctor's job really entails.
 
chipwhitley said:
That's true. Grass is always greener on the other side, and you don't really know what a job is like until you've actually had it. But it still baffles me that a profession with so much press about how physicians are burned out and miserable manages to attract increasing numbers of people, including people like my friends who already had a good stable job making plenty of money, whereas a story like mine of going the other way is incredibly rare.
Click to expand...
demayette said:
I am no expert, but economic security might have a lot to do with it... There other careers out there that are good, but when there is an economic downturn, many of these people tend loose their jobs... For instance, engineering is a good career, but it hard to find many engineers making 120k+/year even after 10 years of experience... I used to worked with someone whose daughter got an engineering degree from MIT and the best job offer she got was in the 70k/year... Even that was a very good salary for a 23 years old, I was kind of shocked because I thought an engineering degree from MIT should get someone 100k/year minimum... On the other, as physician, you have the potential to make 200k+/year right out of school... I know you spend more time in school and there considerable amount of debt involved; however, most people tend to overlook that aspect and others for some reason. At the end of the day, I think it's a 'wash' specially for physicians who are doing primary care except for the job security aspect. For physician that are in lucrative specialties (Ortho, Gas, Rad, Uro etc...), it's a better deal finically if you can deal with all the BS the bureaucrats put in front of you.
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Is this a serious discussion?

It's $$$$$$$$$$. And people don't know or appreciate what happens before you make attending $.

And yes, the grass is always greener.

Someone once said, “If the grass is greener on the other side it’s probably getting better care.”
 
chipwhitley said:
This is very true. I talked in more detail to one of my engineering friends who's quitting to go to med school last night, and it turns out he knows close to nothing about what a doctor's job really entails.
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Exactly. $$$$$$$$

Look at the most competitive fields in medicine... then look at the fields with the best lifestyle and pay. Compare the 2.
 
What you probably most don't want to do is start residency and then leave. Obviously, you know this, but it is worth mentioning how much that can screw everyone around you.

For perhaps more famous (to the SDN crowd) example of someone leaving medicine (twice!), if you've seen the show Boston Med, then you probably remember "Bardouche". Anyway, he can't seem to decide if he wants to be a surgeon or in finance, but somehow it seems to be working out for him either way:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aelbardissi

He's clearly a hardcore guy though. He got a Harvard MBA while being a surgical resident at the Brigham.

chipwhitley, I have no idea about your personality and if you'd be more or less happy doing other things; I don't know if anyone can really say. However, another alternative option is to try to list a few of the things that you most hate about medicine and then make a mission out of trying to fix one of them. This is how things get done, people work on changing things where they see a path forward. You can't change everything, but maybe one or two things. For example, the company that got VC funding I mentioned before started because the med student got really annoyed with how much time he had to spend charting, and he had some ideas, so he started a company with a smart team trying to address that problem. I'm sure every medical person reading this hopes that he is successful and is probably happy to know that a smart guy and his team of engineers is working on this problem. Maybe he won't ever succeed, but it's good that someone is trying. Maybe there are other things best addressed through administrative or political change. Who knows.

Sometimes it is better psychology to have a positive thing you're working towards, rather than negative things you are trying to avoid. Maybe you can find a positive goal in medicine, maybe it will be outside of medicine. But, you might be happy either way:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?language=en#t-1041535
 
alamo4 said:
What you probably most don't want to do is start residency and then leave. Obviously, you know this, but it is worth mentioning how much that can screw everyone around you.

For perhaps more famous (to the SDN crowd) example of someone leaving medicine (twice!), if you've seen the show Boston Med, then you probably remember "Bardouche". Anyway, he can't seem to decide if he wants to be a surgeon or in finance, but somehow it seems to be working out for him either way:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aelbardissi

He's clearly a hardcore guy though. He got a Harvard MBA while being a surgical resident at the Brigham.

chipwhitley, I have no idea about your personality and if you'd be more or less happy doing other things; I don't know if anyone can really say. However, another alternative option is to try to list a few of the things that you most hate about medicine and then make a mission out of trying to fix one of them. This is how things get done, people work on changing things where they see a path forward. You can't change everything, but maybe one or two things. For example, the company that got VC funding I mentioned before started because the med student got really annoyed with how much time he had to spend charting, and he had some ideas, so he started a company with a smart team trying to address that problem. I'm sure every medical person reading this hopes that he is successful and is probably happy to know that a smart guy and his team of engineers is working on this problem. Maybe he won't ever succeed, but it's good that someone is trying. Maybe there are other things best addressed through administrative or political change. Who knows.

Sometimes it is better psychology to have a positive thing you're working towards, rather than negative things you are trying to avoid. Maybe you can find a positive goal in medicine, maybe it will be outside of medicine. But, you might be happy either way:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?language=en#t-1041535
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He's part of the reason if not THE reason that surgical residents at the Brigham can no longer get the MBA during residency.
 
tiedyeddog said:
Wtf? Is this serious?
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He's obviously joking - he works for Google after all:
Chief Operations Engineer and Head Neurosurgeon
Google
1999 – 2005 (6 years)
Founded operations group (network and systems administration).
Scaled network to service more than one billion hits per day from hundreds of thousands of servers in more than half a dozen datacenters across the globe.
Designed and implemented multi-tiered global and local server load balancing across these servers and sites.
Designed and deployed multiple layers of security protection and intrusion detection.
Performed frontal lobotomies (Thursday mornings only).
 
DermViser said:
Do you think all of medicine is just the clinical practice of medicine? Do you think all these companies that are involved in medicine Biotech, Pharma, or companies like Leapfrog, etc. are just doing it for the heck of it? McKinsey hires MD grads (although mainly from top-tier medical schools all the time): http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/faqs/medical_degree
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mimelim said:
McKinsey came knocking about midway through my MS3. Then again last year. I listened to what they had to offer and politely declined (again). Even considering lifestyle + paycheck, it is hard to compare medical consulting to clinical practice. Unless you are at the top of the field in consulting (in which case, you are likely working your butt off), you aren't making a ton.
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Any idea how much these MD grads are making per year with mckinsey?

DermViser said:
With all due respect, I never discourage anyone to not go into medicine. I do however say that that the physician route (when they are alternate routes) is not for everyone which is not equivalent to discouraging. I realize that might sound the same to you, but to most who can understand nuance it isn't, MS-1.
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What do you mean by "alternate routes". Alternate routes to what?
 
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qw098 said:
Of course. BTW... if you're interested. I remember reading this a few years back.

The Deceptive Income of Physicians

Believe it or not, the amount of money reaching a physician’s personal bank account per hour worked is only a few dollars more than that of a high school teacher.

http://benbrownmd.wordpress.com/
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Not that post again. Really. So much wrong with it. Physicians aren't as wealthy as the public thinks we are (and it's getting worse over time), but his article overstates the case.

Among other problems, he counts debt repayment as an expense but he doesn't count the (at least living expense portions of) initial loan disbursement as "income". He doesn't take into account any of the alternative options for loan repayment (IBR, PSLF, employers giving money for loan repayment, physicians choosing to put extra money towards their loans early, really anything except blindly following the 20 year repayment plan) He uses national averages for physicians and the state with the fourth highest salaries for teachers as his baseline. Finally, he counts teacher's pensions, but assumes that all physicians spend 100% of their post-tax income (rather than investing it in a 401k). Oh and he gives the teachers extra pay in his formula for benefits and nothing for the physicians, even though most physicians do have at least some kind of benefits. Even the self-employed will frequently save money on taxes by charging the benefits to their practice, though it wouldn't then show on their income. And more and more physicians are employed by hospitals.

Really, the biggest lesson to take from the benbrown article is this: If you are completely financially ignorant as a physician, took out the maximum in loans (which is twice the average), chose among the lowest paying specialties and live in among the highest taxed states, spend every penny as you get it, use the default repayment plan for your loans (even though it's the close to the worst option available compared to numerous others), AND land a job with median pay but absolutely no benefits, you *still* come out ahead of a high school teacher. And you had those 36 years you were spending an extra $80-90k/year compared to the teacher to enjoy.

On the other hand, with some different choices, that physician above could come out *well* ahead of the teacher. Either more rapid payment of the debt, utilization of a number of programs that would assist with the payment (such as an employer who will provide some debt repayment, or the new IBR/PAYE/PSLF) or saving a portion of his income towards retirement with some decent investments. Show me a physician who earns the median, works that many hours, and has no benefits or 401k, and I'll show you someone who should get a better job.
 
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