physical requirements for specialties?

[soreed]

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how real of a consideration is your physical well being for different specialties? what if you choose surgery but your eyes or hands start to lose their finesse after 20 years of practice?

 

[ckent]

I actually talked with an ophtho resident about this (since it requires such fine hand movements) and he told me that most ophtho's have "disability" insurance that guarentees them the same income if they are no longer to perform the delicate surgeries that they once were able to do. I don't think that disability insurance is the ultimate answer for this question, but it's part of it. Another part is going on to do other things as you get older. In the past, surgeons never had to worry about working to old age since they usually made enough to retire at a relatively young age. Now it's getting to be more of an issue with decreasing salaries and higher med school debt. Some surgeons end up doing things like general practice, some end up teaching or becoming administrators, and I even heard of one that became a drug rep (he became a drug rep at a young age though). Anyways, there are other things that you can do when you can no longer "cut".

 

[edinOH]

He must be paying quite a premium to guarantee his salary if he becomes disabled. The best I can find is a 5K month benefit.

 

[Helper101]

He must be paying quite a premium to guarantee his salary if he becomes disabled. The best I can find is a 5K month benefit.

The maximum you can be insured, as a physician, is $10,000 a month. To qualify for this you need to be earning roughly 120,000/year without group DI or $160,000 w/ group DI. As a physician in training, it varies, but you can purchase about $3500/month on top of group DI, regardless of income.

Another way to protect your earnings, as your income grows, is to purchase disability insurance for your retirement savings. Yes, you can do this! If you have specific questions, email me.

 

[neilc]

physical requirements for specialties:

rads: three eyes and lead gonads
surgery: 4 gallon bladder for those whipple's
GI: congenital absence of CN I
ortho: congenital absence of cerebral cortex
derm: extra fingers to count all of your money
psych: a constant inner monologue (or dialogue...)

those just popped into my mind, i am sure there are many more