Mutual, I mean that sincerely.
Well, I guess it's true that I'm the Larson glass half full kind of guy.
One key area where our experiences may diverge is in how we look at the difficulty of relocating. I've never had any kind of anchor to any one particular place. I've moved with my family, had my kids change schools, uprooted everything half a dozen times in the last 20 years. The last 10 years as an anesthesiologist earning a wage that most people here would consider insulting (though my benefit package is pretty good). So many glass-half-empty people on this forum are living and working in predominantly high cost of living coastal urban areas, often ACT practices with terrible supervision environments, for less money than they could be earning a little ways inland, and I don't get why they won't move. The glass-half-full'ers in those places seem to accept it all as the paradise tax for where they're living.
Anyway, for the purposes of this thread, it seems the notion of "job security" to WCI has a meaning that is worlds different to the average American - and the premeds and med students who are looking at medicine and our specialty.
What your and others' rebuttals to my arguments all have in common is that they are encumbered by a bunch of preconditions
- "within commuting distance"
- not "4:1 coverage"
- "pretty difficult hardship despite always being able to find a job somewhere"
Hell, Mr. S is apparently in a panic with his notion that we're all an anonymous complaint away from LOSING OUR CAREERS.
Job security to normal people means "will I be laid off and be unable to find work" or "will I have to file for unemployment" or "will I need to learn a new trade" ... and these are simply not questions that any reasonable physician can answer yes to.
Medicine has amazing job security. Are the job as wonderful as they were in the 1980s or 2000s, no. Does ACT work suck, yes. Are AMCs evil oppressive wealth-extracting middlemen, yes. Are great jobs and groups still out there, yes. Fewer than there used to be, sure.