Keep in mind that while you are set on surgery now, things DO change. I've know quite a few people that dreamed of being surgeons their entire life. They ate, drank, and slept surgery. They got into it and HATED it. They realized they liked other fields more. Having surgeries and watching surgeries is a far cry from being in the surgical field for a career. The training is long and hard and while you are limited to that 80 hour work week, you still need to learn in that off time. I respect dentists, and if I KNEW I could get omfs then I would shoot for it, but I know I'd be miserable in general dentistry, so I never entertained the idea past that. The variety of surgery available to the md/do is much larger than dentistry. You have ortho, uro, general surgery and all of its fellowships which includes CT, vascular, breast, colorectal, plastics, pediatric, etc., neurosurgery and I'm sure I'm leaving others off. In addition, there are fields that are very procedure based but may not involve you being in the OR all day. (Think any interventional speciality, GI, yada yada yada) I very much like to work with my hands, which I am assuming you do too. That being said, people change their minds in the clinical years and it happens quite often. Once you crawl up in the years the idea of 70+ hour work weeks begins to seem less appealing for many people. If you like surgery, another option to consider is podiatry. Go read about it and check out some of the surgeries on youtube. It is a great field. It might not have the income of a guy pulling wizzies all day, but it does have a nice lifestyle with a broad spectrum of medicine.
I feel we are probably the same kind of person. What you have to do is ask yourself which you will be happiest with if you DO NOT get surgery. It isn't being a negative thing, but weirder things have happened. I personally like the broad spectrum outside of the mouth area of medicine, although DREs and gyno stuff is not very appealing. This isn't about which field is better, it is about what interests you and makes you happy. There is a degree of selfishness that goes into this decision. The saving lives thing is kind of played up a bit. All fields are needed and are valuable for the purpose they serve. I've seen guys come into the ER who just assumed the doc could rip out his tooth and make it all better. He was heartbroken when we told him he'd have to go to a dentist, which he couldn't afford. We don't have free clinics in that town either...All we could do was shoot him up with a little local, contact a dentist that tends to do some probono type stuff and send him on his way. There are few things worse than agonizing tooth pain. In the worst case it can put the person down for the count, resulting in missed worked, migraines, weight loss, and other horrible things. The guy that fixes that will be just as appreciated,if not more, than the guy that fixes a hernia or helps manage a patient's diabetes.
On another note, you will meet quite a few disgruntled doctors lately. There have been huge reimbursement cuts across the boards and there is this general public perception that doctors all make millions of dollars, so a 10 or 15% pay cut doesn't really outrage them like it does the doctors. Not to mention the hoops one must jump through. The old guard tend to be the most bitter, our generation doesn't know any better. There will come a tipping point with this stuff, and I feel it is getting close. It'll be similar to germany where a large group of doctors will say "enough" and start fighting for their rights. We spend far too much of our young life to work 60+ hours and make what is becoming common. One is paid handsomely, but it isn't THAT handsome for the hours one invests. I have friends in other fields that get paid MUCH better for the hours they invest. If they invested 60-80 hours a week would easily make as much if not more than a large chunk of physicians. Hell, I find 9 to 5 kind of boring though. 😛
