MD degree holder options??

[MDoptions?]

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Hi everyone,

Right off the bat: please save the reply telling me to "hang in there". That's been the last 3 years, and then finally getting to the wards and seeing what the miserable existence of the residents is all about...I'm looking for the exit sign. So spare me the rah-rah, or the criticism, or anything other than your experiences and knowledge of those who took a different route once they got their MD besides just following the path along into residency and beyond.
Get this: I'm not trying to antagonize YOU, I'm trying to help ME. OK?

I'm a crapped out MS3 posting here in residency forum, with the idea that since you're several years down the pike from me, you may have some answers that I'm desperately looking for. Here's the thing. I don't know if I can continue with medicine past getting the MD--if I make it that far.

I would rather hear about jobs that people know of that one can use the MD to get into. I don't care if it's MD-author or MD-MBA=big$--whatever formula you've either experienced or seen closely (relative, a good friend, something in the paper you read I guess would do too). I need some time for myself--or jobs with such incredible autonomy and excitement that you can do them for long periods.

I need to know what alternatives there are out there...I am just not going to give up my life for med management techniques in psychiatry! I would love to help people and make money while doing it--I thought medicine was the answer. Now seeing that I suck at learning it, and it leaves me with not a free moment for anything else, and you spend years learning the wrong way (yeah, that's my frank opinion) of treating psych patients (a big interest originally)--I want out.

So hold onto your encouragement for continuing in medicine--or give it at the risk of being waxed right over. I just want to keep it real here: and I think, after all this time and work, that medicine is far away from the glory I imagined--very far indeed. I want a life where I have resources for my family, and time for myself, while doing something that counts. Does that have to be all-consuming like medicine?? Baloney. There has to be a better way.

Thank you so much--your answers mean more than I can say because...my life might change.

Looking for answers, asking questions 😕 Me

 

[Tenesma]

healthcare consulting or healthcare research analyst. If you join a large/top firm, you will probably make about 60k/year for 2 years, and then if they hire you after they train you - you may average 150-200k/year. Having an MBA makes a huge difference...

Another avenue is pharmaceuticals/devices: sales, lobbying... income is about 60-90k/year.

Another avenue is healthcare policy (usually requires MPH): income is 40-60k/year.

* all my numbers are based on very close friends who went down those tracks... of all 7 of them, only one is doing "really" well - she works at a big I-bank in NYC, doing healthcare research analysis - works about 100hours/week (has been w/ that company for 5 years now), and averages (w/ bonuses/commissions) 400k/year. She loves the money/perks, hates the hours and non-stop competitive/back-stabbing work environment.

hope this helps.... but just so you know, many people go through the same thing you are going through right now, and they end up doing just fine once they find the right residency for them.

 

[lowbudget]

Agree.

HC IB - with an MD you enter at the associate level (2nd from bottom) but if you have no accounting/finance experience you WILL work hard during orientation and still be less capable than the 3rd year analysts (bachelor-graduates). Numbers quoted above sound right. Your working hours are the same as those in MD residencies. Expect people to call you in the middle of the night to deliver presentations and spreadsheets to look over before your 7 am client meeting. Expect to be called in from your vacation. Expect to be told that you're going to do a travelling road show in 1-2 days for 2-3 weeks. Basically, expect lots of money and no life. And expect to be stabbed in the back with cases taken away from you by banking gunners.

HC consulting - you'll probably come in at the associate level here also. And will have an easier time transitioning from med school because the knowledge necessary to do this job is more project-dependent. Expect to travel travel travel to places you never knew existed. Expect to be there 4-5 days out of the week, live out of a hotel for 3-6 months straight. A nice job, you earn a good amount of money, projects potentially can be interesting, travelling can get on your nerves, but it's less malignant than banking. Expect the travel to be disruptive to your dating life.

HC equity research - on buy side/sell side - equivalent. Lots of meetings, lots of travelling, lots of talking on the phone. Expected to turn around work fast, typically when quarterly earnings are released. Your job will be to crank out a financial analysis and investment opinion out as soon as possible to make deadline. No one cares if you have to pull all-nighters. Worse yet, people will give you the data that you need when they're done with it, typically 6-7 pm and tell you to have the work done by tomorrow morning. A decent job if you work under a good analyst. A HORRIBLE job if your analyst dumps on you, even worse if you have no accounting/finance background and have to learn on your own. Analysts will expect you to cover a huge universe of companies with them. Expect to "know the company" just as well as you "know the patient"... you will be pimped at meetings just like the HC IBankers about 2003 Q4 gross margin for Company X. Possible coping mechanisms include asking the bankers to send you a model for you to tweak. Expect to work long hours with good money.

Pharm/device/biotech - sales, conducting trials: not a bad job but a waste of an MD degree seeing as a lot of liberal arts majors from undergrad do sales (and earn 6 figures easy on an average run)... it WILL bother you when you have to suck up to MD's to get 5 minutes to talk to them, seeing as you went to med school too. Usually firms want experienced people who know the FDA process or have had extensive research/publication background to work on the clinical trial side of the business... but worth a shot.

At the end of the day, you'll realize that as a late 20-something trying to build a career out of whatever, you will work hard and put up with a lot of crap... whether you're in banking, consulting, academics, medicine. The money will NEVER be enough to compensate the amount of work and sacrifice you put into your career. And there will NEVER be enough time for family because you'll feel compelled to work your butt off to make more money. When you have an advanced degree, people expect more out of you and are willing to pay you for it... and willing to lay you off the second you underperform. Expect your MD degree to be an asset early on, but also expect it depreciate over time as science and medicine pass you by. Good luck in finding paradise.

Alternative is to finish your MD and do a residency in Occupational/Preventive Medicine. There's a profile of this in the New Physician this month (AMSA). It involves 2-3 years of residency, of which only 1 year is done in a clinical setting, 1 year is classroom getting your MPH, and 1 year is a practicum year where you can work for an agency. The 1 year of clinicals is tolerable. You end up with an MPH and can qualify to do a managerial desk job.

 

[southerndoc]

- Research (pharmaceutical or government)
- Hospital administration (CEO of a hospital or similar)
- Editor/author (for websites such as WebMD, private books, etc.)
- HMO administration (you could be one of the new MD's that approve/deny treatments)

 

[edinOH]

With all the above it seems like you would have to be extremely competent in the business/marketing side of things inorder to be successful. That and have a very strong desire to do these things and do them well. Having an MD probably won't give you much of a free pass.

Also I doubt you would really have alot to offer anyone on the healthcare analyst/consulting side of things. When you graduate medical school all you will really have is the MD after your name. This proves you learned some physiology and pathology and have a basic understanding how to begin simple pt work-ups and write a 3 page H&P. You really don't know jack about the healthcare market or where it is heading. You won't have any relevant clinical experience to draw from. No more or less than the typical MBA has coming out of school, but at least in that environment they have been learning how business and markets work. Just as medicine has it's own unique language, so does business.

God help us all if you become a policy advisor/maker. We don't need the least experienced among us telling us how to do things.

And if you want me to keep it really real yo, I would suggest you hang in there. This whole process is can be daunting looking at it from your vantage point, but each year seems to go faster than the last. Now that I'm actually gaining some competence in a specific field of medicine, I'm enjoying it much, much more.

 

[Sessamoid]

Changing careers after med school is difficult in the best of circumstances. If you have a lot of loans (and who besides the indepedently wealthy don't have a lot of loans?), if you do not enter a residency your student loans enter repayment immediately. If you have > $100K in loans, that's going to be anywhere from fairly painful to forcing bankrupcy in short order unless you can find a high paying job pretty quickly.

Unless you're already a writer or businessman, it's a little late to consider becoming a successful one in the next 12 months. Best bet is to find a specialty that doesn't offend you too much while taking time to look into alternatives. That way you can put off the loan payments, get paid a little, learn a possiby useful skill, and explore your other possibilities and/or skills without such a time pressure.

 

[roja]

I concur. Without a residency behind you, much of the really lucrative work is not goign to be readily available. And residency is MUCH different than med school.

If you are looking for a magic bullet of warm fuzzies, lots of bucks, and few hours to work, I would say you need to marry rich and do volunteer work. No matter what field you go into, you will work hard and probably not make a ton of bucks. mega millions is general not for those that want to help others out.

You could always go to law school and do public policy. Or you can get an MBA and sell your soul and work for a big corporation.

Or you can hang onto your desires to help people out and work in medicine and select a specialty that appeals to your lifestyle. There are alot of options out there. PM&R, EM, FP, IM. With the exception of IM, the residencies aren't to bad and the lifestyle is pretty good... especially PM&R.

 

[xanthines]

I'm not a physician yet but I think the best thing to do would be to match in something like pathology (or whatever is most tolerable to you), go for a year, and get your medical liscense. That way, you wouldn't have totally wasted 4 years of medical school. Besides, I'm pretty sure a lot of the jobs mentioned above look at liscensure as a plus. Except for maybe that business analysis stuff.

Just my opinion.

-X

 

[16846]

If you are looking for a magic bullet of warm fuzzies, lots of bucks, and few hours to work, I would say you need to marry rich and do volunteer work.

What an excellent phrase! 👍 😀

 

[roja]

lol. thanks.

 

[docB]

If you are looking for a magic bullet of warm fuzzies, lots of bucks, and few hours to work, I would say you need to marry rich and do volunteer work.

Are you suggesting he try to become John Kerry?

 

[oldtimer]

This is one of the reasons why I'm glad that I worked for a little while before heading back to medical school. The grass is NOT always greener on the other side of the fence. I've gotten a lot of exposure in technology, business, marketing, and sales. To do well in business, you have to work long hours and put up with a lot of uncertainties. It's just not my cup of tea. While the training period to become a doctor is long and arduous, the one good thing is that there is an end point. You don't have that with business. You have to constantly prove yourself to others. After a while, this gets on your nerves.

 

[aliraja]

Or you can get an MBA and sell your soul and work for a big corporation.

Ouch. That hurt. 🙂

OR you could take a break from med school, go to business school, figure out that the lifestyle is unrewarding (despite the money) and would actually give you LESS time for your family (or, in my case, short term-floozies), more headaches, and in some cases less $$ than medicine and then come back to finish med school and go on to a residency in the only field that seems worthwhile.

Or maybe that was just me.

 

[roja]

🙂 it was a broad generality.. 😀

 

[2005]

You could always teach anatomy/physiology at a junior college to nursing students. Wouldn't pay worth a crap, but it would be less time consuming and stressful than some of the other options mentioned.

In several states, you can get your license after one year post graduate, ie transitional year.

 

[docB]

You can make $$$ by commiting an act of gross negligence in collusion with your patient. See the instructional video "Malice." 😀

Seriously, I have a few colleagues who have gone into "medical asthetics" which basically means they have whored out their names to beauty salons that then pitch themselves as "medical" spas. There's apparently good money in this although it seems kind of shady.

 

[notstudying]

Ouch. That hurt. 🙂

OR you could take a break from med school, go to business school, figure out that the lifestyle is unrewarding (despite the money) and would actually give you LESS time for your family (or, in my case, short term-floozies), more headaches, and in some cases less $$ than medicine and then come back to finish med school and go on to a residency in the only field that seems worthwhile.

Or maybe that was just me.

Or you could take a break from medical school and do an MPH or a MPP-these would make you more qualified for a research or policy position and give you some time to figure out whether you want to do residency, and to make some contacts in case you don't.

 

[doraku]

I was feeling the same way as MDoptions until I read this thread. I began medical school doe-eyed filled with compassion and motivation to help the sick. After three years, I will never catch up on the sleep I need and I find myself turning into the very doctor that I vowed never to be. I notice that I could care less about the minute details the patients have to tell me and I am infuriated by the fact that half of them don't even know why they are seeing a doctor to begin with. With the exception of surgery, I hated all my rotations and found myself wondering why I was sitting in rounds for five hours and not being acknowledged. The one specialty I enjoyed is not only the most demanding but also the very one I did not want to do when I began. I have questioned my decision to begin medical school more times than I care to admit. I also question the fact that I am about to possibly embark on another 5-7 years of sheer stress in hopes to find satisfaction at the end of the day. Family and a social life are obviously out of the question for anyone going into surgery residency and who knows if attendings get much of that either. My future looked pretty bleak but after reading the threads I've realized that I should just marry rich. Just kidding..sort of. It sounds like there is no perfect world and, in a country driven by money with no priority for family or mental sanity for that matter, everyone makes huge sacrifices. So I suppose I will suck it up, learn to live on cafeteria food and 4 hours sleep a night, and finish what I've started. *sigh*

 

[Square Pants]

Hmmm... No one has mentioned too much about research here...

You know, research with an M.D. doesn't have to be directly related to the bio-medical field. I extended med school for a fifth year to learn about computer science and I.T. Programming classes, networking, etc etc.
I then decided it was best to do a 1 year internship just to get licensed, and after move into something that really interests me. C.S. stuff is my hobby anyway. If all else fails and I end up poor and shoeless, I can just apply to a PGY-2 in gas or something.

You don't need to make life long career decisions right now. Others may insinuate otherwise. Ignore them. Just move in the direction you feel most drawn to (overall, not just in medicine!). Once you are there, reassess.

I am not at all worried about my future, even though I don't know exactly where I will be/what I will be doing in 10 years. Most student M.D. types cannot handle this level of uncertainty regarding careers. Be prepared for the, "really?? Huh... 😕 " from your colleagues.

What do you have for loans? Are you married and/or have any dependents?You may need to take some time to get your finances in order before you can start exploring around.

Other than that, my point is... take the risk. Explore a bit. See what you like. You don't need a grand plan (most grand plans change anyway), but you do need ambition and a desire to be happy. And it doesn't have to be in medicine.

Sorry for the rambling. PM me if you want 😎