Specialties with good lifestyles

[Rudy Guliani]

Hey y'all, forgive my ignorance, but which are the specialties that in general are associated with a good lifestyle? I'm not talking about money per se, but more about having time to raise a family, do things outside of medicine, etc. I'm aware of a few of them - derm, radiology - but I'm interested in which other ones are out there. Thanks,

-RG

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[Jamezuva]

FP, anesthesiology, pathology, psychiatry, ophthalmology

 

[UseUrHeadFred]

Preventive medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, occupational medicine.

 

[stormjen]

Good god man, read through old threads. This has been discussed over and over again. Within the past week in fact.

 

[dr.smurf]

FP...can do as much or as little as you want

 

[fourthyearmed]

Never forget that no matter how great the "lifestyle" is rumored to be, if you hate what you are doing it's not a good lifestyle. Pick your specialty based on what you enjoy.

 

[starayamoskva]

Hey y'all, forgive my ignorance, but which are the specialties that in general are associated with a good lifestyle? I'm not talking about money per se, but more about having time to raise a family, do things outside of medicine, etc. I'm aware of a few of them - derm, radiology - but I'm interested in which other ones are out there. Thanks,

-RG

ObGyn, just get into a practice with 6 or 7 partners, work 4 days a week, take call every 7-8 days and every 7-8 weekends.

 

[Jamezuva]

ObGyn, just get into a practice with 6 or 7 partners, work 4 days a week, take call every 7-8 days and every 7-8 weekends.

Yeah, except for the fact that you have survive residency

 

[prominence]

ObGyn, just get into a practice with 6 or 7 partners, work 4 days a week, take call every 7-8 days and every 7-8 weekends.

if u use this logic, then every specialty has a good lifestyle. in my opinion, the best lifestyle is outside of clinical medicine.

 

[PublicHealth]

Yeah, except for the fact that you have survive residency

Not to mention soaring malpractice premiums.

 

[docB]

if u use this logic, then every specialty has a good lifestyle. in my opinion, the best lifestyle is outside of clinical medicine.

Ditto!

 

[doctorsbookmark]

Pathology, Dermatology, and Radiology

 

[DOctorJay]

the ROAD to happiness is
Radiology
Ophthalmology
Anesthesiology
Dermatology

but the best advice is always to forget everything else and find what you truly enjoy doing, no amount of money or free time is going to make a job you hate worth doing.

-J

 

[E Z Daring]

This is very typical thinking for an MS I and although it's commendable, it's unfortunately very naive too. My advice? Don't even think about choosing your specialty based soley on "what you love." Now before someone comes and totally misconstrues what I'm saying, I am not advocating choosing based soley on lifestyle/income either. But trust me and others a few years your senior... these latter factors may not seem important to you now, but the more you progress through your education and career, the more important they become. Sure... do you what you like, but be sure to consider the other very important factors too.

^^^ what he said. Lifestyle is the big thing to keep in mind. What I love is a good lifestyle!

 

[Mirror Form]

This is very typical thinking for an MS I and although it's commendable, it's unfortunately very naive too. My advice? Don't even think about choosing your specialty based soley on "what you love." Now before someone comes and totally misconstrues what I'm saying, I am not advocating choosing based soley on lifestyle/income either. But trust me and others a few years your senior... these latter factors may not seem important to you now, but the more you progress through your education and career, the more important they become. Sure... do you what you like, but be sure to consider the other very important factors too.

This is good advice. It doesn't matter how much you like your job; you're still going to be miserable if your marriage is rocky and your kids despise you b/c you're always at work. Also, nobody dies wishing they had worked more!

 

[doctorsbookmark]

This is good advice. It doesn't matter how much you like your job; you're still going to be miserable if your marriage is rocky and your kids despise you b/c you're always at work. Also, nobody dies wishing they had worked more!

On the other hand... What if you just ABSOLUTELY HATE your work? I do not disagree that lifestyle is important, but to spend 8+ hours a day doing something that you hate is not the best way to achieve happiness either. Afterall, we will be doing that for the next 20-40 years...

I think there needs to be some level of compromise. You have to at least enjoy your specialty. You don't have to LOVE it. There are enough lifestyle specialties to provide different personalities to enjoy what they do. Choose the one that is right for you. If you do not enjoy or tolerate radiology, doing it will be miserable 8 hours a day no matter how good your marriage is.

 

[VentdependenT]

Hey y'all, forgive my ignorance, but which are the specialties that in general are associated with a good lifestyle? I'm not talking about money per se, but more about having time to raise a family, do things outside of medicine, etc. I'm aware of a few of them - derm, radiology - but I'm interested in which other ones are out there. Thanks,

-RG

Prelim surgery resident at large innercity hospital. Its even better if you repeat it 3-4x. You'll be swimming in free time.

 

[doctorsbookmark]

Prelim surgery resident at large innercity hospital. Its even better if you repeat it 3-4x. You'll be swimming in free time.

Love your sarcasm... always refreshing.

 

[ortho2003]

This is very typical thinking for an MS I and although it's commendable, it's unfortunately very naive too. My advice? Don't even think about choosing your specialty based soley on "what you love." Now before someone comes and totally misconstrues what I'm saying, I am not advocating choosing based soley on lifestyle/income either. But trust me and others a few years your senior... these latter factors may not seem important to you now, but the more you progress through your education and career, the more important they become. Sure... do you what you like, but be sure to consider the other very important factors too.

I couldn't disagree more and you are not a few years my senior, so I don't think you can call me naive. Pick your specialty based on what you love. You can taylor your lifestyle once residency is over. My lifestyle right now sin't so hot, but it isn't much different from other residents. When I am out of residency, I won't be wokring nay more hours that the FP guys out there, but I will be doing what I love. I will have lifestyle and a job in which I can drive to work with a smile every day. Do whatyou love and worry about tayloring your practice later. I almost did emergency medicine or anesthesia based on the lifestyle issue, but I realized I could make the lifestyle whatever I wanted, but I realized that I would have been very dissatisfied and probably out of medicine by 40-45. I will be able to taylor my practice to four days a week with reasonable call fairly early on in my career. The only physiicans with miserable lifestyles are physicians who choose to have miserable lifestyles.

 

[prominence]

I will be able to taylor my practice to four days a week with reasonable call fairly early on in my career. The only physiicans with miserable lifestyles are physicians who choose to have miserable lifestyles.

good luck. easier said than done.

 

[avgjoe]

another thing to keep in mind is how many years of residency you will have to go through before you tailor your lifestyle the way you want it - if you were considering gs + fellowship that can be up to 9 yrs (if you go to a school with a research requirement) whereas the anesthesia and fp folks are out in 3-4. makes a big diff

 

[rotty1021]

good luck. easier said than done.

Total BS.

 

[Mirror Form]

I couldn't disagree more and you are not a few years my senior, so I don't think you can call me naive. Pick your specialty based on what you love. You can taylor your lifestyle once residency is over. My lifestyle right now sin't so hot, but it isn't much different from other residents. When I am out of residency, I won't be wokring nay more hours that the FP guys out there, but I will be doing what I love. I will have lifestyle and a job in which I can drive to work with a smile every day. Do whatyou love and worry about tayloring your practice later. I almost did emergency medicine or anesthesia based on the lifestyle issue, but I realized I could make the lifestyle whatever I wanted, but I realized that I would have been very dissatisfied and probably out of medicine by 40-45. I will be able to taylor my practice to four days a week with reasonable call fairly early on in my career. The only physiicans with miserable lifestyles are physicians who choose to have miserable lifestyles.

A lot of it is about priorities. Since I think that personal life is more important then professional life, I'd be much happier to hate my job and have a good personal life then if I loved my job and had a bad personal life. But as was already mentioned, we're better off seeking a happy medium b/w the two. Hopefully, most people can find a specialty with a decent lifestyle that they also enjoy doing.

Aside from a few specific fellowships, it's not all that easy to get a cushy job in fields like general and orthopedic surg. Yes it's possible to tailor your work somewhat. But take gen surg for example, you'll most likely either be in an academic center or part of a private practice group. Either way, you'll be expected to work non-cushy hours (probably seems cushy to you now since you're in residency), take call, etc. In gen surg, you won't be able to pay your malpractice insurance w/o working long hours and no private practice group will take you on unless you have lots of patients or agree to work long hours. Ortho gets reimbursed better, so you can work less if you choose. But once again, unless you have your own practice, you'll often be expected to work tough hours by the academic center you work at or by your partners in private practice.

There are some examples of people in tough fields getting jobs with great hours. Those are the exceptions! Also, as was already mentioned, life is short! Sacrificing seven years of the prime of your life (in addition to all the dues we've paid already by going to med school) is a big hit to take unless you know you'll really really love your job when you finish.

 

[tom_jones]

You are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's TAILOR o.k. !?

I don't know what field you're in/going into, but it sounds like one of the gunner specialties, and I don't think altering your lifestyle to fit your whims is gonna be as easy as you think it will. And writing off your 20's may be no big deal for you, but it is for others. Regardless, I wish you luck.

Why would anyone take advice from a dude with a mullet

 

[hans19]

In gen surg, you won't be able to pay your malpractice insurance w/o working long hours and no private practice group will take you on unless you have lots of patients or agree to work long hours. Ortho gets reimbursed better, so you can work less if you choose. But once again, unless you have your own practice, you'll often be expected to work tough hours by the academic center you work at or by your partners in private practice.

Agree with sledge. No group is gonna take a fresh newb and spoon feed him patients so that he can work 4 days a week. You gotta make yourself available at odd hours and take the less-desirable cases to build up a patient base so that you can at least break even.

You HAVE to work a MINIMUM number of hours to be able to pay your overhead and YOURSELF. A grossly over-simplified example:

Let's say working 80 hours (including call duties) as an ortho grosses you $500k... malpractice is 50k overhead, office, staff etc is another 100k... ergo, you take home $350K before taxes (listed national avg income of an ortho, probably way south of the actual figure).
If you worked 40hrs (if this is even possible), you'd gross 250k. Your malpractice wouldn't change much, and you're over head probably wouldn't change by much.

250- (150 or 100) = 100-150k...
Sounds more like Shorty's Pawn and Kwik Loan than Bank

Reducing your hours by 50% decreases your take home by more than 50%.

This is of course a gross overexaggeration (gross and over head figures are probably much higher), but my point is by decreasing a certain percentage of hours, you take a disproportionately greater percentage cut in your take-home.

Not that making anything in the 6 figures is something to cry about, to the majority of the public.

-Hans

 

[ortho2003]

You are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's TAILOR o.k. !?

I don't know what field you're in/going into, but it sounds like one of the gunner specialties, and I don't think altering your lifestyle to fit your whims is gonna be as easy as you think it will. And writing off your 20's may be no big deal for you, but it is for others. Regardless, I wish you luck.

That is what I get for trying to type post-call....not that I am that hot when I am not post call. Anyway, I am an ortho resident in a community program. There are 45+ pods in the community and many have great lifestyles...working 4-4.5 days a week, home by 5 or 6 when they aren't on call and only on call once a week, or every other week. Only the traumatologists and some of the guys that are just out in practice work crazy hours. If you want to have lifestyle, you can do it with any specialty. You may have to survive a brutal residency, but you can TAILOR your practice however you like.

 

[ortho2003]

[Ortho gets reimbursed better, so you can work less if you choose. But once again, unless you have your own practice, you'll often be expected to work tough hours by the academic center you work at or by your partners in private practice.se are the exceptions! [/QUOTE]

Less than 10% of all orthopods work in academic centers. THose in private practice have a great deal of flexibility. If you want to be a traumatologist in a level I trauma center, your life will be crazy, but a sports guy, or a hand guy can easily be working 4-4.5 days a week and get home by 5 or 6 when they aren't on call. If you are taking call at a community hospital that doesn't take a ton of trauma, you call can be very cush and if you are in a decent group, or get in a situation that has groups cross-cover for each other, you lifestyle can be great. The sad thing about med school and residency is most people see only academic medicine or medicine in urban settings. You guys have no clue what real private practice can be like if you aren't in a community program that has multiple different hospitals and practice set-ups. Trutst me, you can have a very good lifestyle in almost any specialty. Neurosurgery is probably the toughest, because they tend to only be in busy trauma centers, but you can do neuro and set yourself up in a smaller community and only do spine and elective cranis and have a pretty nice life because all the head injuries will get shipped to the level I.

 

[ortho2003]

Agree with sledge. No group is gonna take a fresh newb and spoon feed him patients so that he can work 4 days a week. You gotta make yourself available at odd hours and take the less-desirable cases to build up a patient base so that you can at least break even.

You HAVE to work a MINIMUM number of hours to be able to pay your overhead and YOURSELF. A grossly over-simplified example:

Let's say working 80 hours (including call duties) as an ortho grosses you $500k... malpractice is 50k overhead, office, staff etc is another 100k... ergo, you take home $350K before taxes (listed national avg income of an ortho, probably way south of the actual figure).
If you worked 40hrs (if this is even possible), you'd gross 250k. Your malpractice wouldn't change much, and you're over head probably wouldn't change by much.

250- (150 or 100) = 100-150k...
Sounds more like Shorty's Pawn and Kwik Loan than Bank

Reducing your hours by 50% decreases your take home by more than 50%.

This is of course a gross overexaggeration (gross and over head figures are probably much higher), but my point is by decreasing a certain percentage of hours, you take a disproportionately greater percentage cut in your take-home.

Not that making anything in the 6 figures is something to cry about, to the majority of the public.

-Hans

Again, your perception is scewed by what you see in med school and residency. In my community, there are probably only 10% of the orthopods working more than 60-65 hours a week on a consistent basis. Yes, as a newbie, you may have to take more call than your partners, but call isn't killer at non-trauma centers. I have seen it too many times for you to convince me that it is not possible to live very well financially and have a good lifestyle while working in a field like orthopedics. It all depends on where you live and what type of practice you join.

 

[Rudy Guliani]

Forgive my naivete, but how do anesthesiologists have good lifestyles when they need to be in the OR the same hours as the surgeons do, and the surgeons might be there till the wee hours of the night?

 

[Pilot Doc]

Forgive my naivete, but how do anesthesiologists have good lifestyles when they need to be in the OR the same hours as the surgeons do, and the surgeons might be there till the wee hours of the night?

1) Because it's shift work. Multiple anesthesiologists can staff one case in sequence.
2) anesthesiologists have (almost) no pre or post op responsibilities. They don't see the patient in the ER, review their CT scans, round on the floor after finishing in the OR, take phone calls from the nurses after they go home, come back to operate on the same patient again at 3 am when they bleed, etc.

Anesthesiologists are just one more (very highly skilled) cog in the OR machine - just like the scrub nurses and the autoclaves. The thing that makes their lifestyle good is very high pay/work ratio with very flexible scheduling. They do have to take some night call, but excepting derm and path, almost everyone does

 

[phd2b]

Add Rad-Onc to the list of great lifestyles, and even great residencies. It is all OP work and since the patients are all very ill (many die), the malpractice is not out of control. The rad-oncs I know are very very happy, make a load of bank, and love the technology and chance to cure patients. That said, it is VERY competitive (think ~700-800 applicants for ~120 spots annually), so if you think it is for you, you'd better start publishing now. Just my $0.02...

 

[doctorsbookmark]

I remeber a 4-5 years back, No one knows about Rad-Onc because it was such a small field. NOw it is very popular because of the lifestyle and income.

What I heard is that the cutaneous cancer has very high cure rate. The ones that have internal malignancies, positive outcome is not really expected so malpractice is ironically not as bad.

It is definitely a great field

 

[theD.O.C.]

I couldn't disagree more and you are not a few years my senior, so I don't think you can call me naive. Pick your specialty based on what you love. You can taylor your lifestyle once residency is over. My lifestyle right now sin't so hot, but it isn't much different from other residents. When I am out of residency, I won't be wokring nay more hours that the FP guys out there, but I will be doing what I love. I will have lifestyle and a job in which I can drive to work with a smile every day. Do whatyou love and worry about tayloring your practice later. I almost did emergency medicine or anesthesia based on the lifestyle issue, but I realized I could make the lifestyle whatever I wanted, but I realized that I would have been very dissatisfied and probably out of medicine by 40-45. I will be able to taylor my practice to four days a week with reasonable call fairly early on in my career. The only physiicans with miserable lifestyles are physicians who choose to have miserable lifestyles.

I'd have to agree with Dr. Ortho. Once you are out of residency (remember residency=legalised slavery), you can fit the practice to your lifestyle to a great extent. As an example, there's locum tenem work and hospitalist work, and part time work in large groups like Kaiser. The caveat is all these alternatives have big trade offs in job security, independence, and career advancement. Then again life is all about choices. In my opinion, there's a whole lotta bullcrap in medicine, so you better do something that you enjoy to help make the eventual bitterness and sacrifice seem more palatable.

 

[Rod Farva]

I'm also with you, Ortho. What really turned me onto medicine in the first place was seeing private practice docs in a wide variety of fields in my hometown with great lifestyles and great compensation. It seemed that no matter what field docs were in, they could pretty much tailor their practices however they liked.... ie work <50 hours a week, and still clear 300+K per year. This pretty much applied to any field you could name (aside from FP making that much $). Couple this with a low cost of living where I'm from, and being a doc seemed like a pretty good racket, and you could do what you wanted to do with your career.

Now I'm a M3 in the NE, and everywhere I look docs are working their asses off, not clearing the income they could in other parts of the country, and the cost of living is out of control here. I don't know if this is unique to academic hospital settings, urban settings, or whatever, but if this was all I had to base my expectations on, I'd be getting the hell out of medicine. I know I have a while to go, but I can't wait to get back into a smaller community in a different locale to practice... the grass is definitely greener on the other side.

 

[banner]

Very, very few people "love" their job. A lot think that they'll love it, but when they are there they don't.

Remember, "love" is a really stong word and an irrational one. To love what you do in any field of medicine, you really have to fall off the curve. These people exist, but are rare. Just think about what you have to give up sleep, food, family time, etc... Most people aren't that into anything, unless they have Asberger's or are Bipolar or are a compulsive gambler or a drug addict.

Realistically, I think its best to pick a job or specialty that will maximize your overall hapiness, which can mean different things to different people. But to expect pure bliss simply because you screw bones together or look at films or adjust coumadin... well, I think that's a stretch for most of us.

 

[Pinky]

Very, very few people "love" their job. A lot think that they'll love it, but when they are there they don't.

Remember, "love" is a really stong word and an irrational one. To love what you do in any field of medicine, you really have to fall off the curve. These people exist, but are rare. Just think about what you have to give up sleep, food, family time, etc... Most people aren't that into anything, unless they have Asberger's or are Bipolar or are a compulsive gambler or a drug addict.

I completely agree.

As med students, we were instructed to choose the specialty that annoyed us the least. I still think that this is sound advice. Each specialty has something that you won't like. You just have to find the one that you can live with the most. For me, medicine is a relatively secure job that i do so that I can fund my other interests like traveling and spending time with family and friends.

 

[stormjen]

Same here, I've made my specialty choice (Pathology) based upon pros and cons. This particular residency and career path simply has more pros and less cons than other fields I considered. That doesn't mean I love it - in fact, I find a lot of it pretty boring. But it will allow me, as Pinky said, to have time for and fund my other interests.

 

[BeastNovot]

Same here, I've made my specialty choice (Pathology) based upon pros and cons. This particular residency and career path simply has more pros and less cons than other fields I considered. That doesn't mean I love it - in fact, I find a lot of it pretty boring. But it will allow me, as Pinky said, to have time for and fund my other interests.

Must agree with you, StormJen. Although I actually do like Pathology, fortunately! As for the other responders... I can't say that I know a Doc under the age of 55-60 that can work TAILORED hours and make a significant income. In any specialty. Community or academic. I know lots of women in Peds and FP that made an OK salary working part-time, but they had a second income in their family, so they didn't have to worry about making enough to pay off their loans based on their salary alone. Can't say I know of a young (i.e. <50) surgeon who wasn't still working his tail off. Although some of the sports ortho guys had a pretty good racket-- but they were still working a lot of hours...

And, I still lament the loss of my 20's... and early 30's...
Even in Pathology... a quote from one of my attendings yesterday:
"I remember when I was in college, sitting up in the library, watching the other students sunbathing and playing frisbee, and thinking that after college I would be able to go have fun. Then came medical school, and though it was a different library, I still thought the same things. Then residency... and guess what? 30 years later, I never made it out there. The only thing I know how to do is work..."

Ahh, enjoy your upcoming careers!

 

[GeddyLee]

Must agree with you, StormJen. Although I actually do like Pathology, fortunately! As for the other responders... I can't say that I know a Doc under the age of 55-60 that can work TAILORED hours and make a significant income. In any specialty. Community or academic. I know lots of women in Peds and FP that made an OK salary working part-time, but they had a second income in their family, so they didn't have to worry about making enough to pay off their loans based on their salary alone. Can't say I know of a young (i.e. <50) surgeon who wasn't still working his tail off. Although some of the sports ortho guys had a pretty good racket-- but they were still working a lot of hours...

And, I still lament the loss of my 20's... and early 30's...
Even in Pathology... a quote from one of my attendings yesterday:
"I remember when I was in college, sitting up in the library, watching the other students sunbathing and playing frisbee, and thinking that after college I would be able to go have fun. Then came medical school, and though it was a different library, I still thought the same things. Then residency... and guess what? 30 years later, I never made it out there. The only thing I know how to do is work..."

Ahh, enjoy your upcoming careers!

No matter how much you love a specialty during your 4 week rotation in medical school, how exciting can it possibly be after years doing it.

Think about it...how many cataracts can an ophthalmologists do before it becomes the most mundane boring thing in the world? DO you think an invasive cardiologists still gets excited about putting a stent in for the 4000th time?? No matter what you do, IT WILL become boring and mundane at some point. I'd rather hate my job 40 hours a week than 80, and practically everyone hates their job at some point. I'm sure it all seems so exciting and important as a medical student, but once you get settled down, you'll just want more time to spend with you family.

Funny thing is, the easy lifestyle specialties also seem to have the highest pay! What more can you ask for??? One would expect a general surgeon working 80 hour weeks would make far more than the radiologist who works 40-50 relatively benign hours. But no....they don't. So why would anyone be a general surgeon??? I suppose if you truly want more than anything to do lap choles and hernias everyday of your life, then gen surg is for you.

 

[Thewonderer]

Psychiatry is never boring. The stories do not end.

 

[docdoc]

Same here, I've made my specialty choice (Pathology) based upon pros and cons. This particular residency and career path simply has more pros and less cons than other fields I considered. That doesn't mean I love it - in fact, I find a lot of it pretty boring. But it will allow me, as Pinky said, to have time for and fund my other interests.

I think most medical students lack perspective about what it is really like to have a full time job for years. I know that most med students have worked at some point in their lives to supplement money from home or for extra spending cash but this isn't the same. Many can't understand how everything eventually becomes a job. Stormjen hit the mark, look for a specialty that allows you to have a life outside of medicine because in most instances love of your specialty will fade to another day at the office.

 

[Rudy Guliani]

I agree, I think a lot of med students are just out of college and have an idealized view of what life is going to be like once they're done with school and residency. They don't yet realize what working 80-100 hour weeks will do to marriages, kids, etc, and so they think that as long as you like what you're doing, that's all that matters. I needed to realize, and a lot of other people need to realize, that medicine is not my life, it's going to be my job. The lifestyle associated with the specialty you go into should be as much a priority as how much you like it, and again, I'm not just talking about $$.

 

[Kilgorian]

You have to do what you love; you will likely be doing it for the rest of your life. Take advantage of medical school to experience things with an open mind. Do what you truly enjoy and what rewards you in the ways you need. Lifestyle is a factor; one of many.

While everyone justifies their own existence, you can only do this to a certain extent. I know residents in medicine, anesthesia, radiology, etc. who do not truly enjoy their work and they are bitter people. Bitter. I'm an orthopaedic resident at a level 1 trauma center (= pummeled) and I almost always enjoy it. It's what I want to do. I still get out. Actually, I got married and have two kids. I still love it. It's all possible.

Life is what you make out of it.

 

[Kilgorian]

Quote: "Very, very few people "love" their job. A lot think that they'll love it, but when they are there they don't."

I love my job and I'm a resident! You guys need some passion.

 

[Kilgorian]

This is very typical thinking for an MS I and although it's commendable, it's unfortunately very naive too. My advice? Don't even think about choosing your specialty based soley on "what you love."

Dr. Cuts is giving some poor advice. The most unhappy, bitter people I have ever met were internists. They weren't working very hard. They just didn't enjoy their work.

I guarantee that if you don't like what you're doing you will be unhappy. You can be making $450,000 or working 70 hours a week instead of 85, but you will be unhappy. Sure, there are many factors, but this is the main one.

I guess it depends on why you got into medicine in the first place. Passion led my way. I wasn't just looking for a "good job," whatever the hell that is: I think my job is good, but apparently some disagree. It seems to me that if you don't want to work but you want to make lots of money then you are in the wrong field. Perhaps showbiz ("I'm rich biatch") or something.

 

[DrBloodmoney]

Well I can tell you that I feel very lucky to have loved pathology from day one. It certainly has made my life easy. For the majority of my residency I work a 7-4 day and take call 7 weeks a year (pager-call that is).

 

[rotty1021]

Dr. Cuts is giving some poor advice..

Dr. Cuts' advice is always skewed and should be taken with a grain of salt. I've met lots of happy doctors--internists, cardiologists, orthopods, plastic surgeons, pediatricians. Medicine is broad enough to find something that'll give you no hesitation when going into work each day.

 

[Winged Scapula]

When considering whether you love something or not, ask yourself "why" and "what" about the field makes you happy.

For example, when I'm unhappy at work, if I spend some time trying to understand why, I realize its not surgery or medicine that makes me unhappy but rather other things outside of medicine. Things that would rear their ugly head regardless of the field I've chosen. For me, its largely issues surrounding my fears about my skills or lack of knowledge. I feel uncomfortable and at times, unhappy when I feel less than competent. Funny thing is, before medical school, I would often find myself unhappy when I'd felt I'd reached the zenith of skills/knowledge in my previous jobs. (ie, boredom had set in).

If you honestly don't like what you're doing, no amount of money or prestige is gonna make it any easier to get out of bed in the morning. An unhappy physician is one who makes more mistakes (because he doesn't care enough to try harder) and frankly, probably is unhappy in other aspects of his life. Choose what you love as Kilgorian says...and if you find yourself doing something you don't...find something else.

 

[Ligament]

In my case, I decided that I could NEVER be happy as long as I was on call, or in a specialty where I could not take a day (or even an hour or two) off without coverage. I hate being on a leash like that.

I'm a PM&R resident. 13 HOME calls left this year, none next year. Once I'm in practice I'm going to do all outpatient, no inpatient, NO CALL. Very realistic to do, even at a large academic setting. Good money per hours worked.

I honestly enjoy musculoskeletal medicine and many aspect of rehab. Thank god I found a specialty that worked out for me!

 

[Kilgorian]

Sounds great Ligament; sounds like you actually enjoy the work (and that is key). Sounds like you will be content. Of course, I agree - many aspects of MS medicine are enjoyable and rewarding.