More Money and better lifestyle: dentistry or medicine

[FightingIrish01]

Hey,

I was wondering what field has a better lifestyle (better hours, more family time) and opportunity: dentistry or medicine? I was wondering because I am really not sure what I should do, but interests and passion aside...where can I make the most money in and where would it be the least stressful:

surgery or orthodontics after dentistry school vs. surgery after medical school?


Thanks.

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[TheRealMD]

Sometimes, i'm glad med school isn't so easy to get into..

sometimes...

 

[Blade28]

Please do a search for this often-discussed topic. There have been numerous threads located in this very forum.

 

[BigMDT]

my dentist is adamant about this one........



he loves his job. hes no orthodontist......but he makes near 300K a year....works 4 days a week and gets to see his family all the time. he said he didnt go into medicine cause hospitals are depressing. he loves his job and his patients. he is the single happiest man i have ever met in my life. ive only met one dentist in my life-him. ive met at least one hundred doctors, none of whom are ever that happy.


..........yay, go MDs

 

[JaggerPlate]

This topic always confuses me ....

I think hands down, the lifestyle of a dentist is 'better.' Easier hours, good pay, etc etc. However, I have also heard that they have the highest suicide rate of any profession, and that most of them just aren't happy. Also, I always think about passion. If you have a passion for medicine, a DDS isn't going to make you happy because it's easier. On the other hand, if you are on the fence ... there are a TON of uber qualified applicants for both who know exactly what they want to do, and you will be going up against them. Also, keep in mind that (from what I've heard) orthodontics (sp?) is extremely hard to land ... so it's not like dentistry = easy, medicine = hard, it's all what you make out of it. Do what makes you happy. I am sure there are a lot of happy doctors out there, and if it's what you want ... hopefully you will be one too!!!

 

[notdeadyet]

I think hands down, the lifestyle of a dentist is 'better.' Easier hours, good pay, etc etc. However, I have also heard that they have the highest suicide rate of any profession, and that most of them just aren't happy.

Ah, the suicide dentist myth. You hear the same stat for psychiatrists too.

Read this. It's a good piece. There may be more recent data out there, but the idea has been going around for years about how dentists and/or psychiatrists have the highest suicide rates. It's actually higher for non-psych physicians.

 

[Rotinaj]

My roommate's father is a dentist and he hates his job, but he puts some high dollar bread on the table. If adcoms sniff out that money and lifestyle are high on your priority list then you could have trouble, and rightfully so. They don't want to fill a valuable med slot with someone who is going to quit and go into another business. Also, you don't want to go into medicine if self-respect and passion aren't paramount to long hours and high job stress. So yeah, go dentistry.

 

[badasshairday]

The average dentist now makes more than the average FM, IM, Peds.
Plus they work less hours translating to more pay per hour and training is shorter so they start getting paid earlier.

Go for dentistry.

 

[MDRus]

ORTHODONTIA!!!!!!!!! no question. my orthodontist did all 4 of us at $10,000 a pop. bet i spent a total of 4 hours in his chair over the course of 2 years. and most of that was with his assistants. he has 5 chairs going and he just rotates thru. probably sees 30 patients an hour.

you do the math. he has a house on Martha's Vineyard and one in Palm Beach. He works 4 days per week.

if any of you are in this for the money, this is a no brainer.

 

[osli]

Dentistry probably has higher "minimum" pay levels (compared to many FM, peds, IM) and certainly with less time required to get there and less time required once on the job. This is certainly the easiest route to a "100K/yr" job.

Medicine may have higher "maximum" pay levels (compared to dental surgery or orthodontics) but those are also probably more difficult to achieve (as either residency or fellowship matches), though there are always outliers so this is difficult to know with certainty. This may be the easier (though hardly easy) route to the "1 mil/yr" job.

Several fields in medicine have a pretty nice combination of pay and hours, with varying difficulty of matching into them.