Premed should read the Article

For what particular reason "should" fellow premeds read this one-sided article?

 

Well, I guess Imago's intentions was to make young pre-meds to realize the toughness and the effort in being a doctor day-in and day-out. The article is true for some areas (big urban cities, ex. NYC,LA,SF,ORL) but not neccessarily implying everywhere in the U.S.

 

I may b!tch about having to work harder than most others (like we all do) every now and then, but deep down...i'm loving every second of it! Admit it! You know you love the challenge! It's gonna be tough, but we'll deal with unforseen roadblocks. Even after reading that article, i'm excited about my future. Perhaps i'm warped and enjoy torturing myself!

 

Every time I read one of those 'MD profession sucks' articles, I notice a common theme... all the doctors bitching are in well patrolled urban areas like Boston, NYC, LA, and SF where there's a glut of practicing doctors. Well, WTF did they expect? A shiny Mercedes with their sign on bonus when they're not really needed?! If doctors want to make the big bucks, they have to move to one of the small town, rural clinics where the internal medicine salaries can range from 250k to 500k.

In contrast, where are many of the highly paid lawyers, dotcomers, and consultants in those cities today? At the unemployment office whereas the doctors are still seeing patients. Let's see, when there was a shortage, during the 97-99 tech boom, the aforementioned professionals made top dollars, and during the bust, 2000 and up, they're struggling to make ends meet. Doctors are immune to the boom/bust cycles of the technology oriented work sectors unlike most other highly paid white collar professionals. So, why aren't these facts mentioned in those articles?

 

Because the media is biased. I knew this when I posted the article in the premed forum...I should not have posted it. I regret posting it now.

Alicia

 

I agree with this. I think the article was posted to show those pre-meds out there that being a doctor is not about doing it to get rich.

 

Wow, I'm impressed by that everyone here made the distinction between where the doctors in the article were. I thought I was the only one who saw the unbelievable amount the internist made in the early 90s....$300,000? That is more than any internal medicine doctor I know makes. Plus driving an Acura instead of a Mercedes hardly seems a hardship to me. It makes me wonder what he did with all that money he made back in the 80s and early 90s. Anyone wanna know what a foodserver makes? Because that's how much my mom made while sending 3 kids to college. 1 to ucla, 1 to uci, and 1 to uw....yup 2 want to be doctors and 1 already is. Doctors still make a decent comfortable living no matter what they b1tch about. They are griping about how much they used to make. HMOs may not be a doctor's best friend but they sure are a necessary evil. The way doctors took advantage of medical care before them and still do, is ridiculous.

 

I'm beginning to really despise the media's treatment of a lot of issues, mainly those circulating about the September 11th Attacks. I suppose New York magazine isn't that big a deal nationwide, but I know quite a few people who read it and I've been dumped on by my stock broker friends who happened across it about a month and a half ago.

Then the attacks happened, the economy went belly-up, and a lot of them are facing possible cutbacks and lay-offs. Not that I'm particularly proud that it took something like those horrible attacks to drive the final nail into the coffin of the greatest boom economy in our nation's history (the recession was coming anyway -- the attacks just accelerated its arrival), but they've stopped citing it as a reason why I'm stupid and they "made the best decisions of their lives."

 

Tim, you've got to admit, those IT/finance/consulting people who try to dissuade potential doctors are brainwashed, cult-like idiots. Their entire businesses was tied to the boom/bust ticker tape prices on the NYSE indexes and were oblivious to that fact because they thought the market could never go down or that recessions were ancient history. Much of the software created, during the past three years, was vaporware that doesn't add much productivity to the economy regardless of what the marketeers said in the media. I'm sorry to say it but the boom, at least the bubble portion from 97 to 99, should never have occurred given the crappy level of software quality and bloated/mismanaged IT budgets.

 

This topic is being moved to the Pre-Allopathic forum, where it might be more appropriate.