Pain attainable. Do it. You learn imaging and procedures. You are a physician and you can learn all of this with proper training.
As for salary, from experience, you make pretty good money, but you work much harder compared to psych. Imagine doing procedures from 7:30am to 7pm some days, and don’t forget you will be wearing a 10-20lb lead vest. It’s exhausting and wares on you.
Seeing pain in academic setting is totally different then doing pain in the real world. And if you want to do pain in an academic setting, then you won’t make lucrative amounts because you be seeing much less patients and doing less procedures . Basically, if you want to make lots of money, pain is a good field, but beware, it comes with lots and lots of work, high risk procedures at times(CESI), high malpractice insurance, mich high chance of getting sued, and orth and Neurosurg send you patients after they run out of surgeries.
But, I promise you, if Pain is your passion, it’s really rewarding and I am happy.