Medicine -- avoid at all costs

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cosine89 said:
the juice ain't worth the squeeze. if i can prevent at least one of you naive bright-eyed premeds from entering this profession, i'll sleep better at night.

i was once in your shoes. and, oh man, how i was i could be again, so i could walk the f*** away from this soul-crushing journey.

AMA.
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Elaborate????
 
1. quality of life: very poor. minimal time to be a human being. try spending time with friends, family, and taking care of yourself when you regularly clock 70-90hrs/wk.

2. financially: very poor. literally. you will be very poor for a long time. you will take on a tremendous amount of debt at a high interest rate. and there is no guarantee this journey will be worth it. in fact, i guarantee, you will earn less than what a doctor makes today. the healthcare bubble will burst. our salaries will take a hit. count on that.

3. your youth: don't waste it in school and residency. your 20s will unequivocally different than your non-medicine peers. they will have infinitely more free time. they will travel. they will get promotions. they will have jobs with nice perks. they will buy homes.

you, otoh, will be in your early 30s doing flash cards on a saturday night as your prep for an exam that will cost you $2k to take (see step 1,2, and 3... and CS)

this. for starters.
 
I think it’s a pretty nice gig. Great pay, lots of respect, great colleagues, appreciative patients, and I make a difference. My hours suck right now, but I’m doing the work of two doctors (and my pay reflects that).

I wish I knew more how much the debt would really grow (my parents couldn’t pay my way through), or how much time you really do sacrifice. But if you can balance things well in med school, go into a good residency (PM&R and psych have great lifestyles in residency, and are fairly non-competitive despite some recent increase in competitiveness), and get a good job (not that hard to find if you look, negotiate a good contract), then it’s tough to beat.

People respect me when they hear what I do. They look up to me. I come home each day knowing my job matters and that I’m making a difference.

If pre-meds can find other things that make them happy, then sure, look into it. You lose nothing by looking into other jobs and seeing what’s right for you.
 
May I ask what residency you're pursuing? Do you think that's contributing to your hate of medicine?
 
Jappa said:
May I ask what residency you're pursuing? Do you think that's contributing to your hate of medicine?
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radiology. yes.

yes, because in radiology you realize how corporate medicine has become. we are a commoditized field. we are replaceable. and we work for the man (*looking at you private equity company*). and i may very well lose my job to a computer right as i break even from paying off loans.

that said, there's doom and gloom in every field of medicine, and some of it is not just fear mongering. midlevel creep is very very real. M4FA is coming in some capacity and in some form in our lifetimes, and our big salaries will shrink, but our loans will not.
 
RangerBob said:
I think it’s a pretty nice gig. Great pay, lots of respect, great colleagues, appreciative patients, and I make a difference. My hours suck right now, but I’m doing the work of two doctors (and my pay reflects that).

I wish I knew more how much the debt would really grow (my parents couldn’t pay my way through), or how much time you really do sacrifice. But if you can balance things well in med school, go into a good residency (PM&R and psych have great lifestyles in residency, and are fairly non-competitive despite some recent increase in competitiveness), and get a good job (not that hard to find if you look, negotiate a good contract), then it’s tough to beat.

People respect me when they hear what I do. They look up to me. I come home each day knowing my job matters and that I’m making a difference.

If pre-meds can find other things that make them happy, then sure, look into it. You lose nothing by looking into other jobs and seeing what’s right for you.
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did you pay 250-300k for your education? (@ 6.2%?)

for your generation, yes, medicine was a sweet gig. well respected and incredibly well compensated. that is changing.
 
I don’t mean to be rude but out of curiosity, did you shadow or work with doctors prior to medical school?

I’ve worked as a scribe for quite a while and with physicians from several specialties. I feel like now a days the amount of experience preferred for medical school admissions kind of puts you in a “you knew what you were getting into” situation.
 
cosine89 said:
radiology. yes.

yes, because in radiology you realize how corporate medicine has become. we are a commoditized field. we are replaceable. and we work for the man (*looking at you private equity company*). and i may very well lose my job to a computer right as i break even from paying off loans.

that said, there's doom and gloom in every field of medicine, and some of it is not just fear mongering. midlevel creep is very very real. M4FA is coming in some capacity and in some form in our lifetimes, and our big salaries will shrink, but our loans will not.
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I hope to become a radiologist and what makes you think that you will be fully replaced by a computer anytime soon? I feel like although gains are being made, we’re quite some time from seeing fully automated imaging readings.
 
It would be more helpful to premeds here if they knew your background, motivations for pursuing medicine, journey, stage of training and/or current practice. Medicine does require many sacrifices, and definitely is not the right fit for everyone. However, the future of medicine is far from doom and gloom. These 'sky is falling' threads have been around for quite some time (a thread was necrobumped recently that had similar predictions for medicine 10+ years ago). Like with any career or major decision, everyone should be doing their due diligence.
 
cosine89 said:
the juice ain't worth the squeeze. if i can prevent at least one of you naive bright-eyed premeds from entering this profession, i'll sleep better at night.

i was once in your shoes. and, oh man, how i was i could be again, so i could walk the f*** away from this soul-crushing journey.

AMA.
Click to expand...

Why did you go into medicine in the first place, why did you choose radiology, and when did you start regretting your decisions?
 
This thread was actually really informative for me. I wasn't aware that rads was on the decline until it hit a vertex point in 2014-15 and then continued to trend upwards like a parabola. It was so bad that many residency programs went unfilled due to students seeing how bad the demand was, however with the change in demand there are now more residency slots opening up to train more medical graduates. I can see where the OP is getting at when they are skeptical of growth continuing in rads as a return to downturn or a bad economy could result in private practices potentially being slashed or downsized due to renegotiation with hospital networks. Coupled with that possibility, it is possibly more daunting to consider the prospects of finding a new job with now more graduates in the pipeline getting ready to be pumped out from newly expanded residency programs.

I also wasn't aware of the fact that rads residency is 5 years with 1 year being a prelim year. Radiology sounds like it has some awful growing pains too with PGY-2 feeling like "It feels like the beginning of med school but twice as bad." The breadth of knowledge seems daunting.
 
Select All That Apply said:
This thread was actually really informative for me. I wasn't aware that rads was on the decline until it hit a vertex point in 2014-15 and then continued to trend upwards like a parabola. It was so bad that many residency programs went unfilled due to students seeing how bad the demand was, however with the change in demand there are now more residency slots opening up to train more medical graduates. I can see where the OP is getting at when they are skeptical of growth continuing in rads as a return to downturn or a bad economy could result in private practices potentially being slashed or downsized due to renegotiation with hospital networks. Coupled with that possibility, it is possibly more daunting to consider the prospects of finding a new job with now more graduates in the pipeline getting ready to be pumped out from newly expanded residency programs.

I also wasn't aware of the fact that rads residency is 5 years with 1 year being a prelim year. Radiology sounds like it has some awful growing pains too with PGY-2 feeling like "It feels like the beginning of med school but twice as bad." The breadth of knowledge seems daunting.
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Im sorry but I’m having a really hard time believing that the market is that bad for a radiologist...

Also, the post talks about radiology residency being difficult. Of course it’s difficult!

The reddit link kind of moves away from the point of this thread in my view. Look, I understand doctors may be making less, but save for a handful of specialties is it really that bad making 300k even with about 1 million in debt?

I don’t know if it’s because of the economic class I come from, but to me it seems like a decent deal (albeit not the best, but it’s what I love).
 
Select All That Apply said:
This thread was actually really informative for me. I wasn't aware that rads was on the decline until it hit a vertex point in 2014-15 and then continued to trend upwards like a parabola. It was so bad that many residency programs went unfilled due to students seeing how bad the demand was, however with the change in demand there are now more residency slots opening up to train more medical graduates. I can see where the OP is getting at when they are skeptical of growth continuing in rads as a return to downturn or a bad economy could result in private practices potentially being slashed or downsized due to renegotiation with hospital networks. Coupled with that possibility, it is possibly more daunting to consider the prospects of finding a new job with now more graduates in the pipeline getting ready to be pumped out from newly expanded residency programs.

I also wasn't aware of the fact that rads residency is 5 years with 1 year being a prelim year. Radiology sounds like it has some awful growing pains too with PGY-2 feeling like "It feels like the beginning of med school but twice as bad." The breadth of knowledge seems daunting.
Click to expand...


If you want a reason why an area of medicine sucks, you’ll find it.

Gas? "CRNA’s!"

FM? "Midlevels!"

Psych? "More Midlevels!"

Internist? "Even more Midlevels!"

Rads? "Artificial intelligence!"

Anything surgical? "Crazy hours, you never see anyone!"

High salary? "Crazy debt, impending joblessness!"

Passionate about medicine? "Job ain't what it used to be!"

I could do this all day. There will always be people who choose to fixate on the frightening "What ifs?". This is demanding work, and can sometimes bring out our most negative perspectives.

When someone stumbles into this thread in 20 years, they'll see that the radiologists around them are doing fine (doing whatever radiologists do in 2039). As Eric Topol said - it's more likely that radiology will go through a "renaissance," than dissapear.

Medicine will change a LOT over the course of our careers. This isn't a static gig. Imagine the world we'd live in if medicine hadn't changed at all over the past century. Miraculously, the physicians of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s adapted as the game changed. We'll all adapt too.
 
cosine89 said:
1. quality of life: very poor. minimal time to be a human being. try spending time with friends, family, and taking care of yourself when you regularly clock 70-90hrs/wk.

2. financially: very poor. literally. you will be very poor for a long time. you will take on a tremendous amount of debt at a high interest rate. and there is no guarantee this journey will be worth it. in fact, i guarantee, you will earn less than what a doctor makes today. the healthcare bubble will burst. our salaries will take a hit. count on that.

3. your youth: don't waste it in school and residency. your 20s will unequivocally different than your non-medicine peers. they will have infinitely more free time. they will travel. they will get promotions. they will have jobs with nice perks. they will buy homes.

you, otoh, will be in your early 30s doing flash cards on a saturday night as your prep for an exam that will cost you $2k to take (see step 1,2, and 3... and CS)

this. for starters.
Click to expand...
In my early 30s doing flash cards? Naw. I'm 21 and I'm not interested in a long residency. I should be done by 29-30. So yes, 20s gone but I also have my entire 30s and beyond to do whatever I want. Sorry your life sucks.
 
@osamine I genuinely feel bad for residents and think that it is the most difficult type of training where you feel like trash on a daily basis. I think that a field like medicine attracts people who are driven to help other people. When it comes to a long and lengthy training process that involves residents feeling incompetent and seeming like the wheels are spinning in place then it must be an agonizing experience. Then also comes the realization that you are locked into this specialty for the most part when you are trying so hard just to get a grasp of being competent within it.

Radiology for a trauma hospital is literally the butter to the hospital bread with stat CT reads and MRI scans being ordered left and right. Admission diagnoses have become incredibly reliant on scan interpretation and the fact that neuroradiology is one of the first topics covered in PGY-2 most be one of the most daunting experiences considering the complexity in differentiating between nuances of strokes, seizures, and other types of encephalopathies that are neither here nor there. Specialties like FM and IM do not require physicians to be able to do scan interpretations, therefore forcing an incredibly high amount of accountability from the radiologist to not just do a good job but to also process an increasingly large volume of scans. Of which can be emotionally taxing even for people who have high degrees of hardiness.

The market was bad for radiologists and is currently in a strong boon cycle. I don't know why you are skeptical, but you can access NRMP residency information and also check the radiology boards on this site from 2012-2014 and see that there was a thread 60-something pages long about the job outlook for radiologists. Also not sure if you are skeptical of radiology specifically or specialties in general falling prey to bad job outlooks due to the naive adage of, "Everyone gets sick so everyone needs a doctor." But if it is the latter then you should look into specialty boards like rads onc and pathology to understand that not every field has the same versatile demand like FM.
 
cosine89 said:
did you pay 250-300k for your education? (@ 6.2%?)

for your generation, yes, medicine was a sweet gig. well respected and incredibly well compensated. that is changing.
Click to expand...

I borrowed quite a bit more. I am a new attending, in my low 30’s, so I don’t thing there’s a significant generational component at work here.
 
Every field will have someone who will tell you its not worth it. Lawyers will tell you not to pursue their career because its too stressful, pharmacists will tell you not to pursue their career because the market is oversaturated with them, and teachers will tell you not to go into teaching as it does not compensate well. Explore the field you want to go into thoroughly because you'll be there for the rest of your life. Medicine is not cut out for everyone, and the same goes for any other career.
 
@Kardio Medicine isn't static, it is clear that it is a very dynamic field. However, the training system it utilizes is frankly archaic and due to its inability to change forces a soul crushing amount of debt on students. Many medical schools use the tuition from the first two years of school to subsidize for clinical rotation sites. This model has become a race to the bottom with Caribbean schools like Ross out-pricing DO/MD schools and causing schools to raise tuition rates so they can have the capital to just keep business as usual. This is especially prevalent in areas like New York where several hospitals have closed down and thus having seen the very real reality of closure have entered into million dollar clinical education contracts with Caribbean mills.

When Hahnemann University Hospital closed down, why were many residents first informed of the closure through reporting on the news rather than through their program directors? Also, why were they held hostage in a hospital system that would not be able to complete their training. Are residency spots being really bidded on in a free auction without any interest or oversight by the government? The game is changing, but is it moving in the direction that you want it to be changed? If this is the attitude that incoming physicians have towards their own colleagues and with the impending issues, then I'm not surprised that more states are turning independent practice as comments like yours indicate little to no interest in how physicians ought to collectively band together to at least attempt to stop the general erosion that is going on within the field.

When Epic is automating the process of diagnoses orders sets to "press this box to insert these automated order sets for ______" except contraindicated for "______ or _____" then it is hard not to see midlevel encroachment as physicians at this point are almost giving data feedback for automation to occur where an NP or PA could fill in boxes for 90% of cases for a fraction of the price. But it is when there are 10% of fringe cases that are not stereotypical cases of disease presentation or have significant contraindicators or a co-history factors that need to be treated in tandem with nuance then what happens? Patient care is generally getting jeopardized because of substandard processes being pushed to the fore and physicians being devalued for their expertise and skill. McDonaldization forces people to want it hot and now without caring if they are actually getting an actual burger or pink goo. And when you're paying off seven figure loans are you going to go out of your way to tell them that what they are getting is actually the pink goo?

It's really an odd thing that the optimism on this site is almost dismissive of the critical changes in medicine rather than contemplative or adoptive of what those changes could entail. Perhaps I'm just naively pessimistic when I see states like Florida get repeatedly pegged by the ANA like annual clockwork to reconsider and become independent practice with it having transitioned from a refusal in the House to an acceptance in the House and a dismissal in the Senate subcommittee. How many times will it take before the Senate subcommittee changes leadership and allows it to pass, isn't it a question of time when midlevels are persistent and physicians are permissive? Who knows, I'm sure everything will be fine.
 
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Select All That Apply said:
the training system it utilizes is frankly archaic and due to its inability to change forces a soul crushing amount of debt on students.
Click to expand...

It's only "soul crushing" if you compare medical school debt to an average person's income. The most recent Medscape survery puts the average radiologist salary at $419k. What is that - twice the average medical school indebtedness?

I would love for medical school to be cheaper. But "$300k in debt!?!" needs to be put in context.

Select All That Apply said:
When Hahnemann University Hospital closed down, why were many residents first informed of the closure through reporting on the news rather than through their program directors?
Click to expand...

That's pretty awful. I'd still take medicine today over medicine 100 years ago.

Select All That Apply said:
Also, why were they held hostage in a hospital system that would not be able to complete their training.
Click to expand...

I don't know about this specific case. I'm assuming because there were patients in that hospital who needed physicians.

Select All That Apply said:
When Epic is automating the process of diagnoses orders sets to "press this box to insert these automated order sets for ______" except contraindicated for "______ or _____" then it is hard not to see midlevel encroachment as physicians at this point are almost giving data feedback for automation to occur where an NP or PA could fill in boxes for 90% of cases for a fraction of the price. But it is when there are 10% of fringe cases that are not stereotypical cases of disease presentation or have significant contraindicators or a co-history factors that need to be treated in tandem with nuance then what happens? Patient care is generally getting jeopardized because of substandard processes being pushed to the fore and physicians being devalued for their expertise and skill. McDonaldization forces people to want it hot and now without caring if they are actually getting an actual burger or pink goo. And when you're paying off seven figure loans are you going to go out of your way to tell them that what they are getting is actually the pink goo?

It's really an odd thing that the optimism on this site is almost dismissive of the critical changes in medicine rather than contemplative or adoptive of what those changes could entail. Perhaps I'm just naively pessimistic when I see states like Florida get repeatedly pegged by the ANA like annual clockwork to reconsider and become independent practice with it having transitioned from a refusal in the House to an acceptance in the House and a dismissal in the Senate subcommittee. How many times will it take before the Senate subcommittee changes leadership and allows it to pass, isn't it a question of time when midlevels are persistent and physicians are permissive? Who knows, I'm sure everything will be fine.
Click to expand...

I am not saying to ignore the things you've mentioned. I am saying that, for all of time, people will make arguments like you're making. I am also saying that I am not deterred by these things enough, by a long shot, to avoid medicine (which is the whole point of this thread).
 
Please do not make career decisions based off n=1 salty mofo.

Time? Sure residency ****ing sucks, but I know multiple docs who work 20 hrs/week and still make bank.

Finances? If you aren't an idiot, you could outright pay off your student loans in 3 years of attending salary. 5 years if you went to an expensive ugrad and got an SMP.

Youth? Relative as ****. I've met a lot of people who have felt like they peaked in their 30s. You're gonna be 30 at some point anyway. Might as well be 30 with financial freedom and the ****ton of money that comes with having MD/DO in your name.

Also, a computer won't replace a radiologist within even 20 years, and this is coming from someone who is semester shy of a CS degree.
 
I don't think my eyes could go further in the back of my head at these cyclical types of posts. I'm sure your opinion - albeit extremely biased - could be useful for some folk that are teetering on whether this is the right career or not for them.. but there's a reason pre-meds always say "don't go into medicine unless you are unequivocally, 100% sure, without a doubt, wanting to be a doctor for all of the good-hearted reasons one chooses to be a doctor".

Like many people have mentioned, radiologists make, on average, $400k a year.. If average indebtedness is between 200-300k, you should be able to pay these off within 2-3 years of your attending salary if you put 50% of your income towards your debt (which would be the advisable way to do it considering 130k income is otherwise still pretty damn good *post-tax). 6.2% interest, sure. But that amounts to roughly 20k which is also a drop in the bucket with said $400k salary.

All 20-something-year-olds that are pursuing careers worth anything will "lose" a lot of their youth towards climbing the mountain that is establishing themselves. I think the word "lose" is rather pessimistic, as although residents are treated crappy, imo, these are the formative years you're learning how to be the best physician you can be - which seems extremely productive, worthwhile, and valiant - far from a "loss". I only consider this a "loss" in the eyes of people that sit staring at the clock all day waiting for 5pm to come around and live for their evenings and weekends - you're doing something wrong if this is the case.

I'm sorry your life feels crappy, OP. Perhaps you went into medicine for the wrong reason and now it is not living up to your expectations, or you would've been happier/as content as you were doing something else. It's never too late to switch careers or even what your day-to-day is. Tons of opportunity with MD... teaching, research, etc. I wish you all the best.
 
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thegrind33 said:
Grass isn’t always greener. My dad went into business after he got his BS, he spent his 20s working 60-70 hour weeks and traveling a lot. The beginning of your career is always gonna be rough imo
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“Excuse me, don’t you know that every other college graduate can waltz into a CS job at Google with guaranteed job security and a base pay of 200K? Medicine is the only profession that requires sacrifice and hard work!!!” - sheltered SDN docs who post these threads every 2 weeks

Most bio grads from my undergrad who didn’t go into medicine or consulting make like $15/hr washing dishes. So many doctors are unbelievably out of touch with how fortunate they are.
 
Career-focused people are generally too obsessed with the meaning their career gives their life to bail on a failing profession. An extreme example is humanities academia. Go on Reddit and see people complain about how they spent 7-9 years in grad school for a PhD in English and then end up homeless! Why would you pursue a field that has been saturated since the 80s? People are delusional.
 
CheGuevaraMD said:
Career-focused people are generally too obsessed with the meaning their career gives their life to bail on a failing profession. An extreme example is humanities academia. Go on Reddit and see people complain about how they spent 7-9 years in grad school for a PhD in English and then end up homeless! Why would you pursue a field that has been saturated since the 80s? People are delusional.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping by "field" you are referring to these hypothetical "extreme examples". So this is more of a general PSA (perhaps more to naysayers), but common knowledge and a quick Google search would reiterate the shortage we have on doctors, albeit dispersed shortage with a likely adequacy in more densely populated areas. Nonetheless with an ever-increasing aging population and forever-need in rural/geographically-isolated areas, I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea that medicine is a cap-able profession. There will always be a surplus of injury and disease, no matter which way you cut the pie.

www.aamc.org

New Findings Confirm Predictions on Physician Shortage

The United States will see a shortage of up to nearly 122,000 physicians by 2032 as demand for physicians continues to grow faster than supply.
www.aamc.org www.aamc.org
 
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procrastitator said:
Accountants lose their 20s in a windowless cubicle staring at Excel. Lots of careers are hard.
Click to expand...
I work in healthcare policy/administration, in my mid-late 20s, strongly agree. Some people love this work, others become stuck and live for the weekend, but they're too tired to do anything on the weekend anyway. Unless you're loaded or abnormally lucky, your 20s are going to be a grind no matter your career path. You've got to choose the grind that gets you where you want to go.
 
Wolvvs said:
I work in healthcare policy/administration, in my mid-late 20s, strongly agree. Some people love this work, others become stuck and live for the weekend, but they're too tired to do anything on the weekend anyway. Unless you're loaded or abnormally lucky, your 20s are going to be a grind no matter your career path. You've got to choose the grind that gets you where you want to go.
Click to expand...

Or work paycheck to paycheck until you turn 30 in a month and start medical school with a boatload of debt and 2 kids... it's fine :hello:

1570650317642.png
 
cosine89 said:
radiology. yes.

yes, because in radiology you realize how corporate medicine has become. we are a commoditized field. we are replaceable. and we work for the man (*looking at you private equity company*). and i may very well lose my job to a computer right as i break even from paying off loans.

that said, there's doom and gloom in every field of medicine, and some of it is not just fear mongering. midlevel creep is very very real. M4FA is coming in some capacity and in some form in our lifetimes, and our big salaries will shrink, but our loans will not.
Click to expand...

QFT.

Add in that we are putting our medical license and liability on the line while the Big Machine profits or regulates our labor. Please let that sink in.
 
cosine89 said:
the juice ain't worth the squeeze. if i can prevent at least one of you naive bright-eyed premeds from entering this profession, i'll sleep better at night.

i was once in your shoes. and, oh man, how i was i could be again, so i could walk the f*** away from this soul-crushing journey.

AMA.
Click to expand...


How brave of you to try and find a sympathetic ear amongst a group of pre-meds 🙄.

Man-up and finish strong. You're taking for granted what some would kill to have. I'm glad you didn't go into surgery.
 
StanleyYelnats said:
“Excuse me, don’t you know that every other college graduate can waltz into a CS job at Google with guaranteed job security and a base pay of 200K? Medicine is the only profession that requires sacrifice and hard work!!!” - sheltered SDN docs who post these threads every 2 weeks

Most bio grads from my undergrad who didn’t go into medicine or consulting make like $15/hr washing dishes. So many doctors are unbelievably out of touch with how fortunate they are.
Click to expand...
I dont consider myself fortunate. My wife and i were married as med students . We paid back every loan with interest. Every dollar we earned came fro treating patients. I make no apologies for hard work and being paid for a very high functioning career.
 
Angus Avagadro said:
I dont consider myself fortunate. My wife and i were married as med students . We paid back every loan with interest. Every dollar we earned came fro treating patients. I make no apologies for hard work and being paid for a very high functioning career.
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I think doctors have earned their salary and more, but hearing OP say that the finances of being a radiologist are “very poor”, when his annual salary is several times greater than both my parents’ income combined, I genuinely can’t help but feel like he has no idea what it’s like to actually be in a poor financial situation. Assuming an average debt of 200K and an annual salary around 350-400K, you can pay that off within 5 years if you scrounge a little. I understand this is easier said than done if you’re also trying to raise children/buy a house, but its 100% doable. There are other professionals with similar debt who get jobs with a starting salary of 50K. In addition, with a smart investment strategy, your net worth could be in the 10s of millions by retirement. I cannot take anyone seriously who says that this is very poor.

I don’t know what impact legislation like M4A will have on my salary as a physician in 10 years, but I don’t think any sort of universal healthcare system is likely to be implemented in the US. The unemployment rates for physicians are almost negligible. Financially, going into medicine will almost always be a good guarantee.
 
Dr panda said:
Is it an SDN tradition to start new “medicine sucks” thread every month with exact same flame war every time?
Click to expand...

it's not a coincident these threads come up so frequently. it's bc a lot of people are very unhappy... at all stages of training
 
RangerBob said:
I borrowed quite a bit more. I am a new attending, in my low 30’s, so I don’t thing there’s a significant generational component at work here.
Click to expand...

there definitely is. you just happen to be in the latter generation. the generation strapped with massive debt.
 
Princeton Medical Student said:
Please do not make career decisions based off n=1 salty mofo.

Time? Sure residency ****ing sucks, but I know multiple docs who work 20 hrs/week and still make bank.

Finances? If you aren't an idiot, you could outright pay off your student loans in 3 years of attending salary. 5 years if you went to an expensive ugrad and got an SMP.

Youth? Relative as ****. I've met a lot of people who have felt like they peaked in their 30s. You're gonna be 30 at some point anyway. Might as well be 30 with financial freedom and the ****ton of money that comes with having MD/DO in your name.

Also, a computer won't replace a radiologist within even 20 years, and this is coming from someone who is semester shy of a CS degree.
Click to expand...

your CS degree w/ probably little to no real world experience does not qualify or credential you to make statements on the current or future state of these technologies. sorry. bud.
 
t
mmchick said:
I'm hoping by "field" you are referring to these hypothetical "extreme examples". So this is more of a general PSA (perhaps more to naysayers), but common knowledge and a quick Google search would reiterate the shortage we have on doctors, albeit dispersed shortage with a likely adequacy in more densely populated areas. Nonetheless with an ever-increasing aging population and forever-need in rural/geographically-isolated areas, I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea that medicine is a cap-able profession. There will always be a surplus of injury and disease, no matter which way you cut the pie.

www.aamc.org

New Findings Confirm Predictions on Physician Shortage

The United States will see a shortage of up to nearly 122,000 physicians by 2032 as demand for physicians continues to grow faster than supply.
www.aamc.org www.aamc.org
Click to expand...

there is no MD shortage. you will come to learn that in time. it is a distribution problem. we have plenty of MDs, and too many, in some fields
 
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