Well, As a child growing up I was very intensely involved in sports. I had endured numerous injuries and was exposed to a large extent to the patient side of things. I really liked and appreciated the care that physicians give from the ER to the ortho surgeon who did my acl surgery. Basically I have wanted to go to medical school since third grade. I have never really considered anything else, until now. I do not come from money(I am the first in my family to go to college) so getting into an absurd amount of debt for a MD is beyond terrifying the heck out of me. Where a PhD program will allow me to live completely independent of my parents and acquire minimal, if any, debt. But I do not want to make my life's work decision based on dollar signs, that just isn't the way I was raised.
The debt is scary but you are right to look for other, more important factors to help you make the decision. As far as debt goes, if you end up in primary care, there are a lot of loan repayment programs that can help you erase your debt in a few years. If you end up specializing, you'll make enough money to pay off your loans. If you do an MD/PhD, you won't have debt. (why do you say you don't have the stats for this, btw? How are you confident you could get into med school but not get into to MD/PhD?) In any event, the debt is scary but you stop worrying about it after a while. I have yet to hear of a doctor defaulting on student loans.
I don't think there is a better career in the entire world than medicine. That's why I am a zealot. I do know that a lot of doctors hate their jobs and do not recommend a career in medicine to young people who are considering it. I would not want you to become one of those people.
3 out of your 4 priorities point to PhD and research (and all 4 if you are really worried about the debt). Ironically, I think that the first 3 are also things that many of the aforementioned unhappy docs failed to consider when choosing their career.
You can work part time in medicine, and you can run a private practice however you see fit. So if you get to that holy grail of running your own show, medicine does not have to compromise your family life. However:
- It is important to note that by this time you will have spent a minimum of 7 years working your ass off and certainly compromising your family life to get there (probably longer...most people don't rock successful private practices right out of residency).
- People always bring up opportunity cost, which is important. You can't spend those 7 years working on some other career.
It is easy to talk about 7 years like it will go by very quickly. But it won't. Residency is flipping hard, and you will deal with disgusting, smelly, and all around difficult stuff. I've mentioned some of this in other posts, but here are some things you will probably not be able to avoid:
-the smell of a large, infected wound (it will make your eyes water while you try not to gag)
-seeing/giving an enema
-being in a hospital, 100 yards away from someone who soiled their bed, and you can tell they are infected with
C. diff because of how heinous it smells.
This list could go on and on, because you are around sick people all day, every day (depending on specialty). Bottom line is, a lot of doctors have gotten into medicine without a good idea of how hard of a job it is, and how disgusting it can be.
I look at the gross stuff and say "bfd." I look at the less-than-ideal hours and I know that I would rather do something I really like for 60 hours/week than something I don't like for 40 hours/week. You've got to make your own call on those things.
It's a typical cost-to-benefit, pros vs. cons sort of thing, but where a lot of people go wrong is 1.) Not really understanding all of the costs/cons and 2.) Having $$ as their top reason for going into medicine.
The costs are quite high, but if you really dig what medicine has to offer, so are the benefits.
My first impression is that research is a better, more comfortable fit for you. I would advise you to deliberately try to expose yourself to some of the unpleasant sides of medicine and hospitals (through shadowing/volunteering) before making your decision. The pros have to outweigh the cons for YOU.
