is psychiatry a good fit for my lifestyle needs?

[InnocentMedicalStudent]

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Im still a med student deciding what i wanna do and came to the conclusion that i value lifestyle over everything else including money. Making 100k- 120k a year is going to be way more than i need i'd rather have more free time than make more money than that.
I was wondering if there is some kind of telepsych gigs out there where i can work like 15 hours a week and take a few months off by the end of the year? Is that realistic can i find jobs like that?
Thanks

 

[carparker]

Is this a serious post? Why did you even go to med school?

 

[psydocc]

You've concluded that you need a few months off at the end of the year to recover from... a 3 hour work day? You're in for a rough time in residency and beyond.

 

[zenmedic]

If all you care about is making 120k working part time, don't do psych. In your post I didn't see anything about a passion for psychopharmacology, working with serious mental illness, etc. Psych residency can be incredibly emotionally taxing and if you only view psych patients as a means to bill their insurance and fund your lifestyle it will be bad for you and for patients. Do IM or FM. They are shorter residencies, have decent tele options as well. But I think you should look into non patient facing roles like consulting, teaching, pharma, etc, which can also be done through IM/FM.

 

[InnocentMedicalStudent]

If all you care about is making 120k working part time, don't do psych. In your post I didn't see anything about a passion for psychopharmacology, working with serious mental illness, etc. Psych residency can be incredibly emotionally taxing and if you only view psych patients as a means to bill their insurance and fund your lifestyle it will be bad for you and for patients. Do IM or FM. They are shorter residencies, have decent tele options as well. But I think you should look into non patient facing roles like consulting, teaching, pharma, etc, which can also be done through IM/FM.

yea i think ill do IM instead. thanks for the response

 

[Bartelby]

100-120k per year is very little. It’s about a third of the average psychiatrist’s earnings.

If you can really make it on that amount a 15 hour/week psychiatry outpatient role would likely work. You would have significant difficulty taking more than a couple weeks off at once because your panel would have to be covered, but outpatient scales up and down pretty easily based on how many hours you want to dedicate to it.

Whether it can be telepsych depends on the employer, but you can probably find that. Psychiatry has been gravitating heavily toward telepsych since the pandemic.

 

[InnocentMedicalStudent]

You've concluded that you need a few months off at the end of the year to recover from... a 3 hour work day? You're in for a rough time in residency and beyond.

your profile picture is literally a guy wearing a patek philippe....

 

[psydocc]

your profile picture is literally a guy wearing a patek philippe....

Right, but I'm not the one saying I only want to work 15 hours a week...

 

[FatherPsychiatry]

I don't think going into IM/FM is a good idea, even though the residencies are one year shorter than psych. You will on average work much harder in an IM/FM residency than a psych one, especially as there are a decent number of psych residencies that are "cush" and you are "working" 40 hours a week even PGY1 year aside from maybe your non-psych rotations. Then get through PGY2 and 3 year, and in many if not most psych programs, PGY4 year is a joke and you can probably cut to <15 hours if you wanted. Trick is to find a good residency so do some research here.

Honestly I think with the goal of ~120k salary and 15 hours a week, there aren't many jobs out there other than psychiatry where its that easy. Heck I bet you could cut down to similar if not higher income, with less work, if you just farm your license out to NPs or entrepreneurial EM/anesthesiologists doing ketamine, or aesthetic clinics or whatever.

 

[comp1]

I cannot conceptualize recommending IM/FM to the OP. IM rotations were, by far, the most challenging rotations of my residency and the medicine clerkships were dramatically worse in med school as well. One of my IM attendings in med school was literally expressing suicidal ideation throughout the rotation. My hatred for both of those is a much bigger part of why I am in psychiatry than psychiatry itself, although psych is great. I also do not suspect that the OP is going to be one of the clinicians "emotionally taxed" by their patients in any field... That sort of reaction takes two to tango and they seem like a disinterested dance partner. I get the posters above him wanting to protect the field from predation, but I'm generally agreeing with FatherPsychiatry. Otherwise maybe OccMed? People always seem to recommend that to people who want to do something weird.

 

[InnocentMedicalStudent]

I cannot conceptualize recommending IM/FM to the OP. IM rotations were, by far, the most challenging rotations of my residency and the medicine clerkships were dramatically worse in med school as well. One of my IM attendings in med school was literally expressing suicidal ideation throughout the rotation. My hatred for both of those is a much bigger part of why I am in psychiatry than psychiatry itself, although psych is great. I also do not suspect that the OP is going to be one of the clinicians "emotionally taxed" by their patients in any field... That sort of reaction takes two to tango and they seem like a disinterested dance partner. I get the posters above him wanting to protect the field from predation, but I'm generally agreeing with FatherPsychiatry. Otherwise maybe OccMed? People always seem to recommend that to people who want to do something weird.

yea people here are gatekeeping i think im sticking with psych

 

[InnocentMedicalStudent]

I don't think going into IM/FM is a good idea, even though the residencies are one year shorter than psych. You will on average work much harder in an IM/FM residency than a psych one, especially as there are a decent number of psych residencies that are "cush" and you are "working" 40 hours a week even PGY1 year aside from maybe your non-psych rotations. Then get through PGY2 and 3 year, and in many if not most psych programs, PGY4 year is a joke and you can probably cut to <15 hours if you wanted. Trick is to find a good residency so do some research here.

wow I appreciate the input