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- Jun 24, 2018
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When I was a pre-med 10 years ago...
Everything I read online about work-life balance concerns and doctors regretting their career choice almost scared me away from going to med school. I was extremely close to going into pharm, dentistry, or multiple other fields because of this fear.
Now I am nearing the end of residency (Internal Med) and going onto pulmonary/critical care fellowship. I was reflecting on how happy I am that I made the choice to go ahead with med school and remembered how I was almost scared away from it so wanted to share the perspective I've gained. Basically, I want to assure everyone here that may have the same concerns that work-life balance should NOT be the main thing that steers you away from medicine.
Yes, you work pretty hard during medical school and residency. Each year generally gets easier as you get better at your job. There is an ever-increasing focus on well-being in residency and residencies generally don't work you into the ground anymore (except some surgical specialties), and a handful of specialties actually have very relaxed hours in residency.
What I did not realize when I was a pre-med is how completely controllable your lifestyle is once you complete residency. Physicians are in such high demand that you can basically dictate the hours you work and someone will rush to hire you.
Recent grads of my program and current co-residents are being offered 200k+ to work 10 12-hr shifts per month as hospitalists (in very desirable locations). To make that much while working an average 25 hours per week is absurd in my opinion, I don't care how hard you are working (as an aside, at one of these gigs the hospitalist literally gets paid this much to show up and sleep all night because residents do most of the admissions). Most primary care doctors I have worked with work 4 days per week (which the main appeal I saw to being a dentist). Moreover you can work even less if you want and still make over 100k doing locums work. I've commonly seen lawyer spouses of co-residents hear about our job offers and hours and lament they should have went into med school. There are many fields in medicine but the common theme in almost all of them is that once you are done with training you can control your hours and work less to make less (but still a ton of money).
Ultimately you may (like me) choose to work more than a few hours per week because you find a field that is really fun for you, but at that point it's your decision.
tl;dr: If you think you may enjoy medicine don't let work-life balance scare you away from it.
Everything I read online about work-life balance concerns and doctors regretting their career choice almost scared me away from going to med school. I was extremely close to going into pharm, dentistry, or multiple other fields because of this fear.
Now I am nearing the end of residency (Internal Med) and going onto pulmonary/critical care fellowship. I was reflecting on how happy I am that I made the choice to go ahead with med school and remembered how I was almost scared away from it so wanted to share the perspective I've gained. Basically, I want to assure everyone here that may have the same concerns that work-life balance should NOT be the main thing that steers you away from medicine.
Yes, you work pretty hard during medical school and residency. Each year generally gets easier as you get better at your job. There is an ever-increasing focus on well-being in residency and residencies generally don't work you into the ground anymore (except some surgical specialties), and a handful of specialties actually have very relaxed hours in residency.
What I did not realize when I was a pre-med is how completely controllable your lifestyle is once you complete residency. Physicians are in such high demand that you can basically dictate the hours you work and someone will rush to hire you.
Recent grads of my program and current co-residents are being offered 200k+ to work 10 12-hr shifts per month as hospitalists (in very desirable locations). To make that much while working an average 25 hours per week is absurd in my opinion, I don't care how hard you are working (as an aside, at one of these gigs the hospitalist literally gets paid this much to show up and sleep all night because residents do most of the admissions). Most primary care doctors I have worked with work 4 days per week (which the main appeal I saw to being a dentist). Moreover you can work even less if you want and still make over 100k doing locums work. I've commonly seen lawyer spouses of co-residents hear about our job offers and hours and lament they should have went into med school. There are many fields in medicine but the common theme in almost all of them is that once you are done with training you can control your hours and work less to make less (but still a ton of money).
Ultimately you may (like me) choose to work more than a few hours per week because you find a field that is really fun for you, but at that point it's your decision.
tl;dr: If you think you may enjoy medicine don't let work-life balance scare you away from it.
