Practice scenario for the bachelor-for-life?

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dismorfik

dismorfik

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I don't want kids. I don't want a wife. I don't want a white picket fence. I also don't mind working long hours, intense shifts, on call, every weekend, for months on end--as long as I can have a solid 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months.

What are some specialties/practice scenarios that cater to this lifestyle?

Other threads discuss how to manage dating, career, family, kids "having it all" --I'm interested in something different. Thx in advance.
 
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dismorfik said:
I don't want kids. I don't want a wife. I don't want a white picket fence. I also don't mind working long hours, intense shifts, on call, every weekend, for months on end--as long as I can have a solid 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months.

What are some specialties/practice scenarios that cater to this lifestyle?

Other threads discuss how to manage dating, career, family, kids ("having it all")---I'm interested in something different. Thx in advance.
Click to expand...

Surgery anything.
 
dismorfik said:
I don't want kids. I don't want a wife. I don't want a white picket fence. I also don't mind working long hours, intense shifts, on call, every weekend, for months on end--as long as I can have a solid 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months.

What are some specialties/practice scenarios that cater to this lifestyle?

Other threads discuss how to manage dating, career, family, kids ("having it all")---I'm interested in something different. Thx in advance.
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Frankly, you can do whatever you want.

There are very few specialties where you can't take 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months.

(I took *that* as being the goal, and all the others as things you are willing to do to get that vacation, rather than you are looking to specifically be on call, work every weekend, etc.)
 
Cinclus said:
Have you looked into emergency medicine?
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This. If you don't care how many hours you work, you're flexible on where you're working, you don't mind shifting around between different facilities... Well, you're welcome to work that hard in just about any specialty, but in EM it will actually translate directly into higher pay, so at least you're capitalizing on the commodity you bring to the table (ie flexibility). As for vacation, certainly very feasible, and you can dial your required vacation time up or down and as changing circumstances, energy levels or interests dictate.
 
Unzbuzzled said:
Surgery anything.
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This is where I was leaning broski.....




Winged Scapula said:
Frankly, you can do whatever you want.

There are very few specialties where you can't take 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months.

(I took *that* as being the goal, and all the others as things you are willing to do to get that vacation, rather than you are looking to specifically be on call, work every weekend, etc.)
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I like how you honed right in on the goal haha!

But don't assume a bachelor-for-life can't be a workaholic... I'm actually looking to find a specialty or pracyice scenario I can give more of myself to...and I'm not only willing but also eager to put in some extra hours and devotion into my profession. Again your point reigns true: this can be done with any specialty. More specifically what I'm wondering is if there is something about some specialty or type of practice scenario (academic vs private vs group vs consulting vs big pharma....) that would allow the bachelor to really fluorish.

Hey, maybe there isn't a good answer to this question.... still curious nonetheless.


Cinclus said:
Have you looked into emergency medicine?
Click to expand...

JediZero said:
This. If you don't care how many hours you work, you're flexible on where you're working, you don't mind shifting around between different facilities... Well, you're welcome to work that hard in just about any specialty, but in EM it will actually translate directly into higher pay, so at least you're capitalizing on the commodity you bring to the table (ie flexibility). As for vacation, certainly very feasible, and you can dial your required vacation time up or down and as changing circumstances, energy levels or interests dictate.
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Concept of shift work is appealing, and y'all make good points! I'm shadowing in the ER this weekend to check things out.
 
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I'm amazed that everyone is trying to give the OP suggestions based solely on throwing out specialities that are associated with long hours, even though that was in the original post. It doesn't make any sense, and that's what we should be telling him. You don't pick a speciality based on "I want to be in the hospital a lot" or "what will get me a lot of money." If you do, then you'll be in the hospital a lot and be miserable the whole time. You pick something you're interested in, be it psychiatry or surgery, and then you decide how much time you want to put into it. PERIOD. If you loved surgery, for example, and didn't want to put in a lot of hours, guess what? You can still do locums surgery and have a lot of free time, as long as you can put up with the other parts of locums. If you love pediatrics and for some odd reason are demanding to be in the hospital every weekend, there's nothing that says you can't do that. In fact, most groups of any speciality would be thrilled to have someone volunteer for that. Even if you do something like outpatient psychiatry, I'm sure you could keep your office open on the weekends or into the night if that was your thing and you didn't mind paying the staff.

All that being said, I'm getting the sense that this is a troll thread.
 
ruralsurg4now said:
I'm amazed that everyone is trying to give the OP suggestions based solely on throwing out specialities that are associated with long hours, even though that was in the original post. It doesn't make any sense, and that's what we should be telling him. You don't pick a speciality based on "I want to be in the hospital a lot" or "what will get me a lot of money." If you do, then you'll be in the hospital a lot and be miserable the whole time. You pick something you're interested in, be it psychiatry or surgery, and then you decide how much time you want to put into it. PERIOD. If you loved surgery, for example, and didn't want to put in a lot of hours, guess what? You can still do locums surgery and have a lot of free time, as long as you can put up with the other parts of locums. If you love pediatrics and for some odd reason are demanding to be in the hospital every weekend, there's nothing that says you can't do that. In fact, most groups of any speciality would be thrilled to have someone volunteer for that. Even if you do something like outpatient psychiatry, I'm sure you could keep your office open on the weekends or into the night if that was your thing and you didn't mind paying the staff.

All that being said, I'm getting the sense that this is a troll thread.
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It was a stupid question in the first place. All medical specialties will let you work plenty if you want to.
 
1) why would you pick a specialty on some lifestyle you think you want?

2) troll thread
 
studentp0x said:
1) why would you pick a specialty on some lifestyle you think you want?

2) troll thread
Click to expand...


That's actually a very good idea, imo. I wanted to be a surgeon when I was pre-med. I worked in a department of surgery in a major academic medical center for three years doing translational research (got some good pubs out of it, too!).

But I also got to know the attendings/residents and their lives did not look like how I wanted mine to be at all. Most were divorced, some who were married for a long time clearly had a trophy wife that would cook, clean, raise the kids, etc (I'm marrying a PhD who has made it clear she will NOT be a trophy wife).

They just looked miserable. Absolutely miserable. Even worse they were somehow proud of their misery, getting into pissing contests over who had the least amount of sleep in a given week.

Their kids were the worst part. These kids clearly raised themselves (the ones that didn't have a trophy wife doing it). Or the housekeeper did. I met maybe one or two kids that didn't seem completely neglected.

My family is going to be way, way more important to me than it was for them. I'd like to work in an academic institution, but I plan on doing it now as a subspecialist of internal medicine and staying the hell away from surgery. Forever.
 
All my older patients that don't have any wife or kids are usually the happiest.
 
CassieBagley said:
From the doctors I've spoken to, just about all of the said that when they were young and in medical school they imaged how hard they would work throughout their lives and how having a family wasn't important. Then, around their 30s and just after residency, they all realized that working 24/7 was no longer their priority and that other things in life started to matter- the quality of the life (for example, taking vacations as you said), friends, wife/husband, children, family gatherings, sight-seeing, sharing experiences with other people in a non-medical capacity, etc. Just keep in mind that although at this present moment your priorities don't include having a life outside of medicine (aside from those 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months), they will likely change. One of the worst feelings in life is that of regret.
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I think things are changing drastically in the medical field these days. At least with surgery, there's an acknowledgement (not necessarily agreement with, but acknowledgement) that the new generation of surgeons demands a better lifestyle. You guys may not believe that, and I understand if you don't, but all of our publications and journals have people presenting articles about it and discussing it. Sometimes it's critical and sometimes it's just "how will this impact surgery in the future," but it's definitely a trend. (P.S. The biggest problem is that newer surgeons demand a better lifestyle but have expectations of having the same salary, which you can imagine leads to a lot of conflict.)

As medical students and as residents, surgery is definitely brutal. But most attendings don't have resident-style hours. Even your attendings who you work for in residency don't have those hours, necessarily (although some might and I'm not trying to misrepresent them or take anything away from their hard work). For example, sometimes as a resident I'd page an attending and they'd be at home and I'd be thinking to myself "wtf are you doing at home?" because it was like 3 PM. Now, granted, that doesn't mean they went home at that time every day, but it wasn't like they were in the hospital at like 9 PM every day, either, that's for sure. The difference is that as a resident you cover a bunch of attendings, not just one. So one day, one attending may stay late in the hospital. The next day they don't, but some other attending does, so you're there late. The next day, it's a third attending. So your lifestyle as a resident or student blows, but it's not because you're just following one guy and his lifestyle blows.

I think that it might be the case that someone, even in their 20s, knows what they want in life. I'm not trying to put words in the OP's mouth, but I've known guys who were definitely jaded on the concept of marriage and you could tell they weren't going to get married ever. Or it could be a woman who knows she isn't having kids, ever. So I don't think the question is unfair, but I think a lot of our answers are ridiculous in terms of how people were approaching it (e.g., I'll just figure out what specialty is associated with the longest hours in general and tell him to do that).
 
AlmostAnMD said:
That's actually a very good idea, imo. I wanted to be a surgeon when I was pre-med. I worked in a department of surgery in a major academic medical center for three years doing translational research (got some good pubs out of it, too!).

But I also got to know the attendings/residents and their lives did not look like how I wanted mine to be at all. Most were divorced, some who were married for a long time clearly had a trophy wife that would cook, clean, raise the kids, etc (I'm marrying a PhD who has made it clear she will NOT be a trophy wife).

They just looked miserable. Absolutely miserable. Even worse they were somehow proud of their misery, getting into pissing contests over who had the least amount of sleep in a given week.

Their kids were the worst part. These kids clearly raised themselves (the ones that didn't have a trophy wife doing it). Or the housekeeper did. I met maybe one or two kids that didn't seem completely neglected.

My family is going to be way, way more important to me than it was for them. I'd like to work in an academic institution, but I plan on doing it now as a subspecialist of internal medicine and staying the hell away from surgery. Forever.
Click to expand...

What I was saying was that the OP already knows he wants to work long hours, so why would he need to pick specialties which that traditionally involve long hours? You can work long hours in almost every area of medicine. It's best to do something that interests you, not something that absolutely demands long hours. You can't go into surgery just cause it 'has the lifestyle you want" is what I'm saying. You can have the long hour lifestyle in any field.

I 100% agree with you though. If you're working long hours, and your wife isn't a housewife, your kids will actually be raised by their peers more than anything. (if mommy and daddy aren't home till 8pm, what do you think a bunch of pre teens/teens will be doing?)
Given the long hours in general, I'd be scared that these "trophy wives" aren't being as loyal on average as other housewives. Given the obvious time neglect from their husbands.
 
all the amazing meaningless sex will drain you.



ohhh and the brutal hours will do that too
 
dismorfik said:
I don't want kids. I don't want a wife. I don't want a white picket fence. I also don't mind working long hours, intense shifts, on call, every weekend, for months on end--as long as I can have a solid 1-2 weeks of vacation every few months.

What are some specialties/practice scenarios that cater to this lifestyle?

Other threads discuss how to manage dating, career, family, kids "having it all" --I'm interested in something different. Thx in advance.
Click to expand...

you also don't know if your mind will change. just some food for thought.
 
I really have enjoyed and appreciated the responses so far, both positive and negative.

With all of the discussions about the challenges of managing a professional career and family life, I think the antithesis also merits a discussion...which has yet to be had on these forums.

Ultimately a medical student should choose a specialty based on many factors, lifestyle being one of them.

Money was never mentioned in the question--in fact a bachelor would be less preoccupied with a high salary than, say, a father of college - bound adolescents.

Maybe some of you are right--the way a guy in his mid 20s thinks might vastly differ from the professional in his 40s. I feel like I know who I am but should be open to what the future holds.
 
dismorfik said:
With all of the discussions about the challenges of managing a professional career and family life, I think the antithesis also merits a discussion...which has yet to be had on these forums.
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But, look, the reason is not because we're being hostile to the idea. It's because you don't really need a discussion. The only time you ever have a challenge is when you have a wife or kids because you need to devote time to them. If you don't have them, then what's the problem? For example, I'm single and it actually sucks IMO (see my thread in Spouses and Partners), but that means that I have no obligations to anyone other than myself. It's not difficult. The problem is actually that you get taken advantage of by everyone because they say "you take call here, it doesn't matter for you because you have no kids, but I need to be at home that day." And even though it's not right for them to do that, they're basically right. Being on call one night versus another doesn't affect my life in the least. Do you understand what I'm saying? There's no conflict there, so there's no advice that you need. You could literally just stay in the hospital and intermittently sleep in your car in the parking lot and as long as you didn't mind there would be no problem.

By the way, I left that particular group because, among other things, they were dumping all those calls on me so that they could all be with their families. Note to all married physicians: that was your choice, not mine, so it's not an excuse to use to abuse partners.
 
ruralsurg4now said:
But, look, the reason is not because we're being hostile to the idea. It's because you don't really need a discussion. The only time you ever have a challenge is when you have a wife or kids because you need to devote time to them. If you don't have them, then what's the problem? For example, I'm single and it actually sucks IMO (see my thread in Spouses and Partners), but that means that I have no obligations to anyone other than myself. It's not difficult. The problem is actually that you get taken advantage of by everyone because they say "you take call here, it doesn't matter for you because you have no kids, but I need to be at home that day." And even though it's not right for them to do that, they're basically right. Being on call one night versus another doesn't affect my life in the least. Do you understand what I'm saying? There's no conflict there, so there's no advice that you need. You could literally just stay in the hospital and intermittently sleep in your car in the parking lot and as long as you didn't mind there would be no problem.

By the way, I left that particular group because, among other things, they were dumping all those calls on me so that they could all be with their families. Note to all married physicians: that was your choice, not mine, so it's not an excuse to use to abuse partners.
Click to expand...

You definitely have a valuable vantage point from "the other side." I looked at your thread about the challenges of being single in a rural setting.

I have to wonder- however-if I were in your shoes would I be happier than you are now? Would it be better to stay away from the distractions of the big city while working only to travel back to the metropolis and really live it up during periodic time off?

Also, how do you know you were taken advantage of for being single and not for being young? I worked a few years in a multi physician private practice where the young doc in her early 30s who was childless but married and family oriented constantly complained to the office manager about being overworked (weekends, longer office hours, etc) meanwhile the single, childless doc in his late 30s and who had been with the practice longer only worked 3 days a week. He was gay--but that's neither here nor there.

In the end I would never want to be singled out for being single ;-)
 
AlmostAnMD said:
ll. Most were divorced, some who were married for a long time clearly had a trophy wife that would cook, clean, raise the kids, etc (I'm marrying a PhD who has made it clear she will NOT be a trophy wife).
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I'm just curious - whats wrong with that? Not the trophy wife part but what if you are with someone you care about and she would be a stay at home mom? Is that wrong???
 
studentp0x said:
I tend to assume casual sex = protected sex if you're a healthcare professional. 🙂
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that or snatch up a couple elisas kits from the lab.
Being a bachelor cowboy has to spice things someway, you most follow the bachelor way
 
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