Help please

[AspiringAspirer]

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Hello my name is Andrew and I am new to the forum, and I had a few questions regarding the medical field. I plan on attending Texas Tech after high school (I am a senior) I plan on majoring in petroleum engineering and then attending medical school after. My entire family keeps telling me not to pursue anything medically related due to high debt, pay cuts and the amount of time it takes to become a doctor. My entire family are engineers, my cousin recently graduated college as a petroleum engineer and he immediately got a job making 80K a year. I really like the idea of that. But I would rather go to medical school and become a doctor I don't mind putting in the time. I just have a few concerns that I hope can be answered on this forum. The pay cuts, is that just the general practitioners or the entire field? I'm not totally into it for the money, but I want to be able to pay of the debt and support my family ect, ect. Also if I am attending college and continued education for 10-16 years I want to have money to show for my hard work. Basically I am worried about the future of medicine and I do not want to pursue medicine if it is going to be more detrimental to me than helpful. Thanks for any help, I appreciate it!

 

[MedAhmed]

Relax, you'll be making more than enough to pay off your debt and live comfortably. Lol

 

[Apollo1]

From what I understand, "pay cuts" are not confined to certain practice areas; they can fluctuate across the field, depending on the reimbursement rates that the federal government sets. Physicians have a higher income than the standard American worker, but you'd have to balance that with the debt you'd transfer from undergrad (if any), the tuition & ancillary costs of med school, what specialty you would occupy, etc. You have time to make the choice as to what you want to do with your life; try not to fret too much over it yet. There's plenty of that down the road.

Disclosure: I'm a non-trad, so I obviously don't have any practical experience with the "career" of medicine. Opinions coming from residents or attendings, such as @southernIM or @DermViser would be more relevant than mine.

 

[DermViser]

I think there are several concerns that you have to take into consideration. I'm guessing that you're doing a Petroleum Engineering degree as a fall back to medical school.

With regards to reimbursement cuts, this is across specialties. Pretty much what happens is when certain procedures/interventions are overutilized the govt., through Medicare cuts those reimbursements. Private insurance follows many times what Medicare does. We are currently under a fee-for-service system in which specialists (esp. procedures) are reimbursed quite well. By the time you graduate from med school, this will change, whether that be capitation, bundled payments, etc. The govt. feels right now that medical care costs too much and that outcomes are not that great - even though outcomes are based on more than just medical care (i.e. personal responsibility for one's health). The most likely consequence of all this is that many doctors will be employed by hospital corporations, and not be working in private practice, where there is a lot more autonomy. Contrast this with dentistry.

For right now, physicians make more than your typical American, but that is not the issue and it's something medical students confuse all the time. The more important question is the ROI (return on investment) that you get based on how much money you put into it (student loans). Certain specialties have a very high ROI right now (Dermatology, GI, Plastic Surgery, ENT, etc.) while others have a much lower ROI (Family Med, General IM, General Peds). Esp. in the primary care fields, PA or NP may have a higher ROI in those fields with regards to money put in vs. salary.

This doesn't even take into consideration the HUGE delay of gratification you will have to endure thru the physcian route = 4 years of college + 4 years of medical school + 3-7 years of residency. For many people, that's way too long when it comes to achieving certain goals in their life - marriage, children, owning a house, etc. You have to decide how much you are willing to to give up as well as if it's worth it. All the more reason to shadow doctors and really try to see what affects their practice of medicine.

 

[AspiringAspirer]

First off thank you all for the answers, I greatly appreciate it.
And before I begin please forgive my ignorance on the issues, that is why I am here after all. Here is my main concern, I want to be a orthopedic surgeon (I am aware this is most likely to change and it is impossible to really know until I am in med school) and I'm scared that I'll end finishing all of my education 10-16 years from now and end up getting paid like 100k a year due to medical reforms. And then add that on with 100-300k of debt and a family, plus all the time it took, and all of the continued education and hard work I'd still have for the rest of my life and it seems very scary to me. I've been reading articles and such and just about every single doctor says that if they could go back they wouldn't be doctors, or they advise wannabe doctors to pick another field. And I keep seeing stuff on the news about obamacare and this and that and it adds to my concerns, I'm not really wise enough at this point to make sense of any of it, it just sounds really bad. My family keeps trying to pound it in my head that going to med school is dumb. I can't really see myself doing anything other than being a doctor, I really love the idea of helping people get better. I just want to make sure that after all of that work and effort I'll be able to show some thing for it. I think doctors deserve and earn every penny they make, no one really takes in account all they go through and it pisses me off.

 

[eggman2013]

with regards to paying for medical school, the military offers some programs to help pay for everything. Look up the HSPS scholarship.

 

[Yorick]

You haven't even taken engineering courses yet or done projects. As a biomedical engineer major, I have friends across the board in electrical, chemical, mechanical, etc who either dropped out or switched majors because they couldn't cut it for engineering. I've also had pre med BME friends who started as premeds, but then decided to stick with BME and industry work after taking engineering design courses and doing internships because they enjoyed it so much more. It is way too early to know what you want to do for sure.