help me decide

[mikedoc]

I am in the process of deciding on going either premed or predental and I am very hardworking so hopefully I can do it.

What I want in no particular order
helping people in their health
stable job security
prestige
money (more than 300000 per year)
lifestyle (workhours about 40-50 hrs per week)
not too much stress
respect

could people give me what field would fit above best?
please be specific such as radiologist, opha, orthodontist, internal medicine, general dentist etc...

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[TexanGal]

Prestige and money-wise I'd say you'd be better suited being a doctor.

 

[xucardsfan08]

Hard-working isn't the only aspect. Work ethic and intelligence will get you where you want to go.

On another note, positions that may fill your said requirements would include radiology. My aunt is a radiologist and when I shadowed her for a week, she worked from ~6:30-7:00am to ~3:45pm-4:15pm 5 days/week. She's an interventional radiologist (inserts catheters with dye to track blood flow) and it's a pretty non-stressful job, from what I was able to see.

This is all assuming that you match into your desired program as well. You could also join a surgery practice, start your own, and then you can choose your hours. This would be a little more stressful though.

Family practice is the least stressful, but also the lowest-paying. You could always set up a "high-end" practice that caters to the rich to generate more money, but the pay is good and you can't beat the 9-5 hours of a family practice doc.

 

[Catalystik]

For lifestyle issues and a $300,000 salary go for orthodontics. Beware, though. The programs to specialize after dental school are competitive.

 

[Guile]

Hard-working isn't the only aspect. Work ethic and intelligence will get you where you want to go.

On another note, positions that may fill your said requirements would include radiology. My aunt is a radiologist and when I shadowed her for a week, she worked from ~6:30-7:00am to ~3:45pm-4:15pm 5 days/week. She's an interventional radiologist (inserts catheters with dye to track blood flow) and it's a pretty non-stressful job, from what I was able to see.

This is all assuming that you match into your desired program as well. You could also join a surgery practice, start your own, and then you can choose your hours. This would be a little more stressful though.

Family practice is the least stressful, but also the lowest-paying. You could always set up a "high-end" practice that caters to the rich to generate more money, but the pay is good and you can't beat the 9-5 hours of a family practice doc.

Nice avatar...

OP: When you say you want more than $300K a year, just understand that this is a high salary for even a doctor. Given your list, I think you're definitely cut out for dentistry. Medicine is high stress with lower pay than dentistry (plus residency where you could work up to 100 hours/week while making $45K/year).

 

[youngnflyy]

I suggest that you try shadowing a dentist and a doctor. Both fields are entirely different, and it would be a good way to see whether you're truly interested in either.

 

[gary5]

I suggest that you try shadowing a dentist and a doctor. Both fields are entirely different, and it would be a good way to see whether you're truly interested in either.

This is great advice. Go with the career that you feel you will enjoy more. There are unhappy people (i.e. mismatched) in every occupation. Choose wisely.

 

[PEN15]

I am in the process of deciding on going either premed or predental and I am very hardworking so hopefully I can do it.

What I want in no particular order
helping people in their health
stable job security
prestige
money (more than 300000 per year)
lifestyle (workhours about 40-50 hrs per week)
not too much stress
respect

could people give me what field would fit above best?
please be specific such as radiologist, opha, orthodontist, internal medicine, general dentist etc...

why not go for pre-med? at least that way you cover your bases. Med and dental have similar pre-reqs.

 

[HumbleMD]

Props on actually admitting that you want on okay lifestyle and hours, rather than being in denial like many pre-meds (probably myself included). From my very non-expert opinion, I'd definitely say that your goals more fall in line with dentistry. That, or have you considered a PharmD.?

 

[baylormed]

I'm laughing at the idea of 300K/year for 40 hours a week within either medicine or dentistry. If it was that easy everyone would be doing it.

 

[HumbleMD]

I'm laughing at the idea of 300K/year for 40 hours a week within either medicine or dentistry. If it was that easy everyone would be doing it.

True, we may need a reality check for our friend... Besides being an executive somewhere, 300K, prestige, yet unstressfull and less hours doesn't leave a whole lot of jobs out there. Maybe ridiculously succesfull pornostar? Moviestar? There's always the lottery.

 

[baylormed]

True, we may need a reality check for our friend... Besides being an executive somewhere, 300K, prestige, yet unstressfull and less hours doesn't leave a whole lot of jobs out there. Maybe ridiculously succesfull pornostar? Moviestar? There's always the lottery.

Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking. Time to hit the gym and start playing the lottery.

 

[TheAmazingGOB]

Other than salary, your list points to dentistry. A common misconception people have is how much dentists make. Obviously their families aren't starving, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a dentist that pulls in more than $150K per year (which is plenty). I don't know many dentists that make 300K a year that are only working 45 hour weeks. And as other posters said, orthodontics is extremely competitive to get into and more and more dentists are just doing orthodontics without receiving the extra years of training. Dentist's salary varies widely depending on where you live. You'll get paid more if you practice in a big city, but establishing a practice can be more difficult as the dental market can be pretty competitive. Either choice (dentistry or medicine) is a difficult road and will require long hours, hard work, and strain on your personal life.

 

[YupGypsy]

Other than salary, your list points to dentistry. A common misconception people have is how much dentists make. Obviously their families aren't starving, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a dentist that pulls in more than $150K per year (which is plenty). I don't know many dentists that make 300K a year that are only working 45 hour weeks. And as other posters said, orthodontics is extremely competitive to get into and more and more dentists are just doing orthodontics without receiving the extra years of training. Dentist's salary varies widely depending on where you live. You'll get paid more if you practice in a big city, but establishing a practice can be more difficult as the dental market can be pretty competitive. Either choice (dentistry or medicine) is a difficult road and will require long hours, hard work, and strain on your personal life.

there are actual turf wars within dentistry??

 

[doctormommy]

The best advice that was given to me was- "Only go to medical school if you couldn't be happy doing anything else."

If that doesn't describe you, you should seriously consider why you want to go to medical or dental school, because there are plenty of easier ways to make money. It is a huge commitment financially, emotionally, and often physically. Who knows how things will turn out after you start medical or dental school? You might not be at the top of your class since most people in med school are very hard working and everyone is smart. I have a couple of classmates that only wanted the lifestyle residencies and for whatever reason, they are probably not going to match in them because of low step scores, rough patches due to personal/family/marriage problems, not getting published, etc... What is a shame is they will likely end up in IM or FP and not only will they be miserable, they won't be very good at it and patients will suffer. Perhaps more tragically, they took the med school spots of less competitive applicants who were applying for their last of multiple attempts, who would have been fantastic primary care physicians but were never given the opportunity. Go to med school because you want to be a physician and could honestly imagine yourself in any number of fields, not because you want to be a dermatologist. I have changed my mind several times since beginning school nearly 3 years ago, and that is pretty typical of medical students.

Good luck with your decision, I am grateful for mine, but not everyone is.

 

[GreenShirt]

You may want to check out this website: http://www.aamc.org/students/cim/specialties.htm

It gives you descriptions of medical specialties and their salary ranges. It'll give you an idea of the range of things you can do in medicine. I feel dentistry is more limited, b/c you're essentially choosing your specialty up front. Most specialties fall into the $100-250K range. The ones that go above $300K are extremely competitive, so you better be an academic rock star if you want to land those.

 

[TheAmazingGOB]

there are actual turf wars within dentistry??

Depends on the market, where I live the city is saturated with dentists and some new grads have had to up and move even though they want to live here because they couldn't build a big enough patient base.

To see the turf war just open your local yellow pages under dentists and read the crap some of them try to pull to get new patients such as free whitening, speaking a foreign language, being trained in some special pain-free method, payment plans, etc. Some of them are almost amusing. But hey, if it helps win the turf war you gotta do it.

 

[YupGypsy]

Depends on the market, where I live the city is saturated with dentists and some new grads have had to up and move even though they want to live here because they couldn't build a big enough patient base.

To see the turf war just open your local yellow pages under dentists and read the crap some of them try to pull to get new patients such as free whitening, speaking a foreign language, being trained in some special pain-free method, payment plans, etc. Some of them are almost amusing. But hey, if it helps win the turf war you gotta do it.

what I meant by turf wars is non-specialists encroaching into fields outside of their training; e.g., dentists doing orthodontic works.

 

[Law2Doc]

The best advice that was given to me was- "Only go to medical school if you couldn't be happy doing anything else."

Agree with this. OP, all the criteria on your list MUST be considered secondary to the real question -- what do you find interesting and want to spend perhaps 60+ hours a week for the rest of your life doing?

Also bear in mind that the average salary is far lower and the average hours far higher than what you described in medicine, so if those are real, deal breaker criteria, I probably just answered your question for you. (There is always a very good risk that you will end up in a lower end physician job working long hours and barely breaking six digits, so if that isn't an acceptible worst case scenario, medicine isn't). Here's the JAMA list of average salary and hours in various fields from a few years back (but reportedly most of the salaries have been fairly flat or seen very slight decreases since then). http://www.medfriends.org/specialty_hours_worked.htm
And if stress is something you want to do without, then being any kind of professional is simply not in the cards, sorry.

 

[TheAmazingGOB]

what I meant by turf wars is non-specialists encroaching into fields outside of their training; e.g., dentists doing orthodontic works.

Thanks for the clarification. Since orthodontics is so competitive, many people who want to do it aren't able to get into a program. I don't think there is any governing licensure board (at least in my state) so basically they can go to a couple of seminars on how to do it and start practicing orthodontics. I think they legally can't say they ARE orthodontists, but they (dentists) can say they do braces, retainers, etc. It's a real problem from a malpractice perspective as someone who hasn't gone through the extensive training is more likely to make mistakes. And it ticks orthodontists off because they lose business.

 

[schooltill30]

I guess the only two cents I can offer here is that I think being a dentist would be boring as sin. I guess to each his own, but a big factor in choosing for me is that I want to still be interested 20-30 years down the line. I mean, you'll spend a solid chunk of your life in your career, so you might as well be interested right?