Why You Shouldn't Go into Medicine.

[Superman78]

That was quite a good article, and I don't think people should be so quick to dismiss it. Notice how the author has a great sense of humor - this isn't some miserable person who was forced into medicine and now hates himself for it, the kind of person who would be miserable and complain no matter what profession he ended up in. This is a smart, funny guy who is giving a pretty accurate assessment of what it's like. I think most med students and doctors would agree with all of his points. People are either born to become doctors or not - there has to be a little piece of your brain that's burned out and not functioning in order for you to crave both the good and the bad that comes with being a doctor.

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[WannaBePreMed]

The blog makes good if already well discussed points, though I'm not sure about a couple of things. When I mention being a doctor, I seldom get prejudiced feeling. In fact, people are usually pretty positive. In my experience, people seem to still believe medicine is a cool and exciting field filled and that you actually help people. They also assume you're rich rather than a minimum wage slave. After people get to know me they don't like me, but not really before.

Not sure I've ever really come to dislike my patients or people in general either. My bosses, yes. Patients, not so much.

Most doctors I meet in the most "doctor-y" specialties are not very happy. By that I mean most surgeons, IM docs, OB/GYNs etc. I run into are usually pretty miserable. I'd say a rule I heard once that about 50% hate their jobs, 40% tolerate it, and 10% or so really love what they do holds true. I asked a friend of mine once who's an IM resident if he likes his job. His response seemed to be the general consensus I've run into. He said on days he's not on call or post-call, he doesn't hate it. That's about right.

In other specialties, generally the ROAD ones (radiology, anesthesiology, pathology, derm, rad onc, etc) the docs I run into are very happy with their lives. I'd say about 75% of people you run into in these fields are generally happy with their day-to-day lives.

Thank you for this

 

[BORNagainSTDENT]

IM pre-med..lol...

my status is wrong.. but not anymore... im going to look into grad school..

pre health is the default

whats the difference in the course load.?

 

[Brigade4Radiant]

Most people are unhappy and most people hate their jobs. Doesn't matter what you do you'll find people unhappy with it.

 

[unsung]

Nah, it's just self-reporting bias.

I know happy doctors, and even ones with lives (one I worked for is also a competitive figure skater!). They're just too busy doing actual stuff to post about their wonderful lives on the internet.

Omg! That is so cool! I want to do that It's kinda lucky I'm going into medicine, as many of my hobbies (like skating! but I'm not competitive... yet ) just happen to be kinda expensive. Good to know she's practicing and has time to do that!

 

[futureboy]

Part of the idea of Cutco is that the seller buys the demo knife set and the initial sales come from friends and family, and then that's it, and the seller usually keeps the knives. They've had to deal with multiple lawsuits and deceptive marketing investigations of their sole agent, Vector.

I worked for them a in college for about a month -- I was a pretty lousy knife salesman. I didn't think they were still around...

 

[sacrament]

f you aren't in this for the right reasons, medicine will suck.

Except the "right reasons" are different for everybody and, as it turns out, many people seem to be incapable of determining what their own "right reasons" are. Some of my most altruistic colleagues, who quite obviously were not in this for money or respect, are also the most miserable. And at least a couple people I know who obviously are in this for money and respect are very pleased with life. In my opinion, it's very hard to predict who is going to be happy in this field.

 

[bkz]

Some of my most altruistic colleagues, who quite obviously were not in this for money or respect, are also the most miserable

Do you think that's because they sort of expected patients to comply with their advice (e.g. eat healthier, exercise) and grew increasingly frustrated with people who didn't take care of themselves or their children (smq123's post is a good example). In other words, is it better to go into this with the idea that your job is simply to treat what comes your way, and not deliberate over your patients' noncompliance/laziness/entitlement.

One thing that seems clear is the more idealistic one is at the start, the more jaded they become later on.

 

[circulus vitios]

You will lose all the friends you had before medicine. Everyone loses high school friends. And college friends. And medical school friends. You make new friends and life goes on.

You will have difficulty sustaining a relationship and will probably break up with or divorce your current significant other during training. It's a high stress job. You can either make it work or not work.

You will spend the best years of your life as a sleep-deprived, underpaid slave. It's delayed gratification: you bust your ass off in residency, and you get a nice fat paycheck and slightly better hours as an attending. Everyone pays their dues regardless of the profession. The stakes are higher in medicine, so the dues are greater.

You will get yourself a job of dubious remuneration and high liability exposure. For the same time spent out of college, your I-banking, lawyering and consulting buddies are making 2-5 times as much as you are. Way to compare apples to oranges. The average lawyer salary is $60,000. I-banking and consulting are pure luck. I'd like to see how many 22 year old millionaire i-bankers and consultants there are in today's economic climate.

You will endanger your health and overall well-being. Soldiers, police officers, and firefighters put themselves at much greater risk for a fraction of what physicians earn. Do they bitch and whine? No. Why? Because they love their jobs. Sleep deprivation is a part of medicine. Does anyone expect to sleep into noon every day during residency? Besides, hours (supposedly) get better when you're an attending...

You will not have time to care for patients and treat them as well as you want to. Just like any other job. Do you think police officers are satisfied when they rescue a baby from a crack *****, only to have it thrown into another broken foster home? The only thing you can do is to do your best. If you want to change the world, get into politics.

You will start to dislike patients — and by extension, people in general. I've always disliked people.

You will start to be disliked by people who do not even know you. Just like police officers...




I'll gladly take on a few hundred thousand in debt, study my ass off, and sleep a little less for an awesome job that pays great money. Sounds like another sheltered crybaby who went straight from college to medical school, who has no idea how much real-world jobs suck.

 

[sacrament]

Do you think that's because they sort of expected patients to comply with their advice (e.g. eat healthier, exercise) and grew increasingly frustrated with people who didn't take care of themselves or their children (smq123's post is a good example).

That's some degree of it. Maybe even more important, and less immediately obvious, is the dawning recognition of how little you can do to "help" most people, regardless of how compliant they are. A lot of very compassionate people come into medicine feeling like they are going to change lives! Then it turns out to be less a feature of the job than they imagined. And once in awhile you can do that, although honestly the plastic surgeon doing breast implants is probably "changing lives" every bit as much as the diligent primary care doctor, at least in some manners of speaking. I'm over-simplifying this a bit, but it's an arguable position. We ameliorate, delay, modify, sometimes even improve, and sometimes even cure. And certainly some people don't need to "save a life" or "change a life" every single day at work. Once a week, once a month, once a year might be enough to make them feel good about what they're doing. But maybe this isn't frequent enough or dramatic enough for those truly altruistic people who want to help change the world. I hear some of my colleagues say it over and over again: I'm not making the difference that I thought I would. There's my friend in his neurosurgery residency, incredibly nice guy who cares a lot, but now just obsesses about the horrible outcomes of most of his patients and wants out. And then you've got my plastic surgery buddy who gives a woman the breasts she's always wanted, and now she goes to the beach and has fun and is more confident and happy, and he feels pretty damn good about what he does for a living, and why shouldn't he? It's all about having expectations that are reconcilable with reality.

 

[BORNagainSTDENT]

I really don't see any other options (yet).

 

[westphi]

Your optimism is quite refreshing. I understand that life isn't all rainbows and sunshine. Medicine is a huge gamble and It's been difficult for me to accept that oh so frightening truth. But never the less I feel it's something that I have to embrace. You risk so much (huge debt, family time, youthful years, sleep, health) and all this for the golden chance of fulfillment and happiness. As far as I know I have one life to live and I intend to live it to the fullest. Randy Pausch once said, "You'll have many regrets on your death bed but none of them will be things you did, no matter how stupid or risky they were. You'd regret all the things you didn't do."

That's a good point...I just wonder if medicine prevents many people from doing many of those things they still want to do (outside medicine of coarse). Because once you "commit" to a life in medicine--that's pretty much all you do for a large part of your life. I guess the real question is if you have checked-off all the major things you have wanted to do in life and if you are ready for your life in medicine...

 

[melanoleuca]

Let me reiterate something: Almost every physician likes being a doctor and actually enjoys the small percentage of their jobs that is actually medical practice. Unforrtunately, the majority of every doctor's job is completely ridiculous, so much so that it is comical, and there is no evidence that anything is going to change for the better.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Let me reiterate something: Almost every physician likes being a doctor and actually enjoys the small percentage of their jobs that is actually medical practice. Unforrtunately, the majority of every doctor's job is completely ridiculous, so much so that it is comical, and there is no evidence that anything is going to change for the better.

The vast majority of my clinical time is spent evaluating and caring for patients. I do not think that caring for critically ill infants, researching better ways to care for them or training physicians and others in the care of these infants is mostly "completely ridiculous." There has been only a trivial increase in the amount of paperwork and similar work that I need to spend time on in the last 5 years.

You are entirely entitled to your opinion, but it should not go unchallenged that EVERY doctor has a job that is completely ridiculous.

BTW, I love the teaching, research and clinical care aspects of my job and always have. I am very grateful to those who convinced me to give up the path of engineering and become a physician.

 

[236116]

The vast majority of my clinical time is spent evaluating and caring for patients. I do not think that caring for critically ill infants, researching better ways to care for them or training physicians and others in the care of these infants is mostly "completely ridiculous." There has been only a trivial increase in the amount of paperwork and similar work that I need to spend time on in the last 5 years.

You are entirely entitled to your opinion, but it should not go unchallenged that EVERY doctor has a job that is completely ridiculous.

BTW, I love the teaching, research and clinical care aspects of my job and always have. I am very grateful to those who convinced me to give up the path of engineering and become a physician.

Old Bear speaks the truth again!

 

[WildlifeSaver]

Eh, you were only Pre-Health anyway.

ahaha, roger, you know everyone's status

 

[melanoleuca]

Pace Oldbearprofessor, the majority of most doctor's jobs consists of useless paperwork, bureaucratic struggles, more paperwork, throwing money away on unnecessary testing and consults, defensive medicine, more paperwork, futile or marginally effective care, and patients who are expected to take no responsibility for themselves. I have a friend, for example, who was sued for a bad outcome, the crux of the plaintiff's case being that my friend forgot to write "Return to the Emergency Department for worsening symptoms." Naturally the plaintiff lost the case but you can see how the whole thing was ridiculous and indicative of the current sorry state of the Goat Rodeo.

Not every profession is like this, either.

 

[melanoleuca]

You know if we are just talking paperwork or harsh personalities, I think that is evident in any job. What makes medicine worse on the bad side of things is not the paperwork but the idea that your every move is controlled by MBAs who decide what tests you perform and what you can charge and not charge, etc.

But every profession has their ups and downs and I don't exactly see a lot of people not wanting to go into medicine. I take the good with the bad and don't hold any expectations either way. If you can do that then you can be even marginally happy in medicine.

I was a self-employed engineer and did one one-hundredth of the paperwork. My billing was simple, my book keeping extremely rational, and I did my taxes with a simple software package. Most of my time was billable and none of it, absolutely none of it, was devoted to "compliance," "defensive engineering," or "Futile Engineering." Any other industry would collapse if subjected to one tenth of the inefficiencies and sheer disregard for common sense that is the norm in medicine. I could tell stories of money and time wasted that would chill your blood.

 

[melanoleuca]

The vast majority of my clinical time is spent evaluating and caring for patients. I do not think that caring for critically ill infants, researching better ways to care for them or training physicians and others in the care of these infants is mostly "completely ridiculous." There has been only a trivial increase in the amount of paperwork and similar work that I need to spend time on in the last 5 years.

You are entirely entitled to your opinion, but it should not go unchallenged that EVERY doctor has a job that is completely ridiculous.

BTW, I love the teaching, research and clinical care aspects of my job and always have. I am very grateful to those who convinced me to give up the path of engineering and become a physician.

Oh sure, the vast majority of my time is ostensibly spent evaluating and caring for patients but in reality, the majority of my time is spent on mostly useless bureaucratic tasks related to caring for patients. And many patients are, whether because their care is completely futile or completely unnecessary, completely ridiculous.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

What makes medicine worse on the bad side of things is not the paperwork but the idea that your every move is controlled by MBAs who decide what tests you perform

That would be terrible. Fortunately, in over 20 years as a board-certified specialist I've never ever had an MBA or any hospital administrator tell me that I couldn't perform a diagnostic test on a child who needed it. I've never heard any of my pediatric colleagues complain about this either. Honestly, I can't even begin to think of a situation in which this would occur in an NICU, although I suppose somewhere, sometime it did. I do have MBA's come with on rounds occasionally though. They are nurses who are also MBA's but working part-time as nurses and also MD/MBA residents. In general they don't control what tests we perform.

Oh sure, the vast majority of my time is ostensibly spent evaluating and caring for patients but in reality, the majority of my time is spent on mostly useless bureaucratic tasks related to caring for patients.

That sucks and I agree that useless bureaucracy is bad. For example, I spend about 15 minutes rounding on each baby each day. During that 15 minutes, I typically spend about 3-5 minutes actually examining the baby, about 5 minutes listening to the baby being presented and mercilessly pimping the residents and fellow and about 5 minutes discussing plans while the orders are being written. None of that is useless bureaucracy in my opinion. However, there is mindless bureaucracy in this for sure. At the end of each patient's rounds, I must, by rule, sign the resident's or fellow's typed notes and include useless bureaucracy-driven information including my contact phone number and ID number. Fortunately, I have a stamper that I can use.

Now, this is what really annoys me. It takes me 12.4 seconds on each patient to take out the stamper, stamp the record and sign my name. Of this time, at least 6.7 seconds are spent on the stamper, a totally useless device. Some of my colleagues who are younger than I am can stamp a resident's note in as little as 4.9 seconds. It bugs me that I have to waste an extra 1.8 seconds on each patient just because I'm old and slow. fml.

Every other day or so I must also fill out billing sheets and sign notes to referring physicians and memorandums of transfer. I'm not sure that constitutes useless bureaucracy but it does take up about 30 minutes/week of my time. At most.

 

[melanoleuca]

That sucks and I agree that useless bureaucracy is bad. For example, I spend about 15 minutes rounding on each baby each day. During that 15 minutes, I typically spend about 3-5 minutes actually examining the baby, about 5 minutes listening to the baby being presented and mercilessly pimping the residents and fellow and about 5 minutes discussing plans while the orders are being written. None of that is useless bureaucracy in my opinion. However, there is mindless bureaucracy in this for sure. At the end of each patient's rounds, I must, by rule, sign the resident's or fellow's typed notes and include useless bureaucracy-driven information including my contact phone number and ID number. Fortunately, I have a stamper that I can use.

Now, this is what really annoys me. It takes me 12.4 seconds on each patient to take out the stamper, stamp the record and sign my name. Of this time, at least 6.7 seconds are spent on the stamper, a totally useless device. Some of my colleagues who are younger than I am can stamp a resident's note in as little as 4.9 seconds. It bugs me that I have to waste an extra 1.8 seconds on each patient just because I'm old and slow. fml.

Every other day or so I must also fill out billing sheets and sign notes to referring physicians and memorandums of transfer. I'm not sure that constitutes useless bureaucracy but it does take up about 30 minutes/week of my time. At most.

Naturally if you have an entourage to do your scut work it doesn't effect you.

 

[sacrament]

Naturally if you have an entourage to do your scut work it doesn't effect you.

Academics are certainly insulated, to a certain degree, from a lot of the drudgery. The attending is rarely the one sitting on the phone for hours with social workers, home health, the pharmacy, the consult services, etc. etc. Of course, a lot of private practice docs will also delegate some of this to their staff, but I've never seen it occur to quite the degree that it occurs in academia.
One of our attendings, in particular, will stroll in cheerfully in the morning and exclaim "I can't believe they pay me to do this!" while I, status-post 30hr overnight call, glare at him bleary-eyed. Of course he's cheerful: he simply does the "fun" part: listens to the presentation, has a thoughtful moment, makes a few declarations, co-signs the note and we move on... But, then again, he's earned that right. The discussion is regarding whether it's "worth it" to be a physician, not whether it's "worth it" to be a resident, and the perspective is obviously quite different depending on where you are in the scheme of things. oldbearprofessor is a physician who doesn't spend much of his time on bureaucracy, and we know that obviously these scenarios exist. If this is the sort of practice that you would enjoy, it is incumbent upon you to put yourself in a position to achieve it.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Naturally if you have an entourage to do your scut work it doesn't effect you.

Yup! Isn't it great being in academics! Of course, since the overwhelming majority (but not all...) of pediatric subspecialty medicine is done in a teaching setting with residents and/or fellows, I'm hardly unique in not having to write my own notes.

Of course, I was oversimplifying and in fact I do, for a variety of reasons, write a real progress note daily on a number of patients. This generally takes about 1-2 minutes/patient, because, like the residents, I have a template on the computer and only need to add pertinent new details.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Oldbearprofessor is a physician who doesn't spend much of his time on bureaucracy, and we know that obviously these scenarios exist. If this is the sort of practice that you would enjoy, it is incumbent upon you to put yourself in a position to achieve it.

You are quite correct in this. Note that I willingly have sacrificed a considerable amount of salary to work in an academic institution (pay in academic neo is much lower than private practice, even private practice WITH residents to do the scut), because I choose to spend my time doing things that I think matter.

 

[Depakote]

It bugs me that I have to waste an extra 1.8 seconds on each patient just because I'm old and slow. fml.

I think you're missing the most important part of this quote here...

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Obviously you didn't realize by MBAs I was referring to HMO companies runned by MBAs and the fact that one of the things I've often read on here is that a lot of HMOs tell you what tests you can perform and not and how much to charge etc., and thereby taking the autonomy out of medicine.

No HMO has ever told me what tests I can perform on one of my patients. I'm not sure how they would do that if not by going on rounds with me and telling me I couldn't order a test.

 

[Neuronix]

I don't like to plug myself, but I talk about some of these issues in my latest blog entry. I think the blog post that started this is correct. Most of the things the op's link talks about, at least that I have gotten to yet, have happened to me, despite my best efforts to the contrary. I think the culture of debt indentured servitude as medical training needs to end, but I doubt it will any time soon. So you should keep your eyes wide open and know what you're getting into. I managed to avoid feeling trapped because I don't have debt. I could walk away from medicine now, make easily over 100k/year, and not care. That sort of freedom is empowering, and I know without it I would be really pissed off.

I've been widely criticized as being very negative myself. After being on SDN for all these years, I feel vindicated by watching bright-eyed pre-meds become far more cynical than I was ever portrayed to be, as people I advised on how to get into med school are now residents and I'm still in medical school. But they stop posting. They internalize it all and begin to hate the bright-eyed pre-med they once were. It's a strange metamorphasis.

But I don't think I'm bitter. I'm just reporting how I see things. I took a windy path because that's my personality and I feel like I need variety and challenge in life to be happy. You will not have the same luxuries.

Most of my time was billable and none of it, absolutely none of it, was devoted to "compliance," "defensive engineering," or "Futile Engineering." Any other industry would collapse if subjected to one tenth of the inefficiencies and sheer disregard for common sense that is the norm in medicine. I could tell stories of money and time wasted that would chill your blood.

This is the part of basic/translational biomoedical research I really grew to hate. That combined with difficulties obtaining research funding and the resulting career instability are the primary reasons why I have serious doubts about an academic research career for myself, despite being previously gung-ho about it.

My PhD wasn't in engineering, but that's basically what I did in a closely related field. The inefficiency and beuracracy involved there is extreme to the point where I spent half of my time dealing with beauracracy and half of my time doing experiments. The clinical world is nowhere near as bad in this regard.

The part I'm talking about is academic research, as opposed to clinical academics, which are completely different animals. It almost drives me nuts anymore when someone says "academics" because it means so many different things to so many different people.

Fortunately, in over 20 years as a board-certified specialist I've never ever had an MBA or any hospital administrator tell me that I couldn't perform a diagnostic test on a child who needed it.

I just wanted to point out it does happen, even in academics. At my home institution you couldn't go on the transplant list unless you could show you could pay for it. The surgeon told my father point blank he wasn't getting a transplant without $250,000 and would die within a year. I was 7 years old. He even did have insurance, but they declined to cover the then "experimental" surgery that would last 15 years of mostly quality living. It makes me wonder about uninsured alpha-1-antitrypsin babies. But, you're not going to transplant them from the NICU so it's not really an issue for you. Another example is the simple fact that adults aren't getting an MRI unless they have insurance. A CT will just have to do.

 

[Hinglish]

I'm going into medicine because I hated teaching. Anything would be better than that; hours and hours of students breaking your stones. Nope, not for me. Seriously though, I see medicine as being a very rewarding field. I work as a residential counselor and being able to help people everyday is very rewarding. I see medicine as being very rewarding.

 

[flip26]

I think the culture of debt indentured servitude as medical training needs to end, but I doubt it will any time soon. So you should keep your eyes wide open and know what you're getting into.

I am only a pre-med, but minimizing student debt is one of my main themes, and I am roundly criticized if not hated for it on SDN.

The naivete of many pre-meds RE student loan debt and what it will take to repay that debt in an era of declining physician compensation is mind boggling.

 

[Neuronix]

I am only a pre-med, but minimizing student debt is one of my main themes, and I am roundly criticized if not hated for it on SDN.

It's always easy to defend the status quo. It's always easy to criticize that which is suggested or planned. That sort of thing will never change. I have a lot of unpopular opinions, like universal health care, the removal of pre-med requirements that have nothing to do with medicine like organic chemistry, and free post-high school education. Do I think any of it will happen? No. Do I think it's the most ethical for our society? Sure.

The naivete of many pre-meds RE student loan debt and what it will take to repay that debt in an era of declining physician compensation is mind boggling.

I don't think repayment of debt is the major issue. It can be for lower paying specialties, and while I hear gloom-and-doom scenarios about medical salaries/reimbursements, the reality is I've been hearing THE SKY IS FALLING for 10 years and it hasn't fallen yet. The average physician salary has been increasing constantly. Ok, maybe GIs don't make ~$1 million/year sticking scopes up people's asses anymore, but they still do well enough to make it the most competitive fellowship out of IM. Docs still average $200k/year and that's still enough to comfortably pay off $200k in debt. Debt repayment is still a major concern, considering the cost of tuition and cost of living is growing faster than salary, but docs are still the least likely of any career choice to default on their loans. I can't see this changing, no matter how you feel about Obama and how he's going to destroy the country and our salaries or whatever people on here like to pull out of who knows where.

I think the real problem is that debt forces you to stay within a system. That gives you no bargaining power. That gives you no ability to leave if you dislike it. Your bargaining power is further taken away by the anti-competitive match system where you sign a contract with an employer and you don't even know who that employer is. If you lose your residency for any reason including no fault of your own, you are pretty much completely ****ed, leading to rampant resident abuse. Again, you can't step out of it, you can't negotiate, because you are saddled with no useful skills and an extreme debtload. Even the in my opinion ridiculously lax protections for residents for 80 hour work weeks are ignored, considering there's very little enforcement and no whistleblower protection. This is indentured servitude. America was built on it, and it still persists in medicine today.

 

[Nilf]

I haven't even read this thread, because it's the same damn thing we always get. If you aren't in this for the right reasons, medicine will suck. It's plain and simple. Damn I get sick of these threads.

I don't know the reasons why you went into medicine, but as you will soon find out, most of them are not based on reality.

 

[studentcarl]

honestly i was already aware of all these negs and im surprised there are people out there considering med school who aren't. but still the allure of having the title of "Dr." and a guaranteed line of women wanting to marry you is appealing. Then again im fortunate to be tall and good looking so the latter part is less relevant to myself.

another thing, i'd hate to end up like some doctors who lose touch with reality and still believe creatine or high protein diets are bad for you and will cause kidney damage.

the words, "wow that guy is a ****** im switching to someone else", has frequently crossed my mind.

now i guess im only talking about the PCP, surgeons and other similar specialties are on a whole other level.

If you are really set on "helping people" and still want the title of "Dr", go to Dental School. No residency required.

I guess I 'know' what the next umpteen years are going to be like, but actually experiencing it is something completely different... I wonder how many people are like that...

 

[Neuronix]

but still the allure of having the title of "Dr." and a guaranteed line of women wanting to marry you is appealing.

When does this happen, btw? I'm still waiting

 

[oldbearprofessor]

I just wanted to point out it does happen, even in academics. At my home institution you couldn't go on the transplant list unless you could show you could pay for it. The surgeon told my father point blank he wasn't getting a transplant without $250,000 and would die within a year. I was 7 years old. He even did have insurance, but they declined to cover the then "experimental" surgery that would last 15 years of mostly quality living. It makes me wonder about uninsured alpha-1-antitrypsin babies. But, you're not going to transplant them from the NICU so it's not really an issue for you.

The statement I was referring to was about diagnostic testing being limited, not therapeutic interventions. I have never been told not to order an MRI on a baby due to costs. Heck, even I think we probably do too many MRI's on babies.

BTW, we send babies for liver transplants all the time. I'm not involved in the financial aspect of it, but in recent years, I've never heard of a baby being refused due to money. Again, it may be completely different in adults.

 

[Neuronix]

... (Post above)

That's cool. I hear it's the same over at the big name affiliated peds hospital next door. That's what you get at big name academic peds I guess. A lot of private funding that keeps the place afloat. That and about half the salary you'd get elsewhere, which you already mentioned But since when has doing the right thing been profitable?

 

[jake2]

Really? Not even billing paperwork? Seems my attendings stop for 10 minutes after every patient to navigate some complicated computer program to bill. Lord help them on clinic days.

On some level I assumed I would be transcribing metabolic panels forever as a hospital based clinician. Part of your job as a medical student is to get to the hospital an hour before everyone else and write notes on patients. A lot of time is just re-writting lab values and vitals signs. For weird medical-legal reasons, this "prooves" the team looked at those values. Usually, the resident and attending seem to re-transcribe those numbers again, just to be safe to show they read our note. Repeat 20x, that's morning rounds. I guess I just thought that would last forever...

 

[take the shot]

Yes, the process of becoming a doctor is long and arduous, but it pays off in the end with satisfaction IF becoming a physician truly is what you want. If not, then it's just a long and arduous process that never gets better.

This crystallizes this entire topic beautifully. If you are not passionate about medicine, it is really hard to put forth the enormous amount of work necessary to be really great at medicine. Additionally, without great effort in your studies and residency you will join the legions of physicians who have mediocre skills and are not of much benefit to their patients. Dontcha just love the idea of your family members seeing one of these docs.

I have seen multiple med students/residents stunned by the reality of the job and really dislike the actuality of doctoring work but stay because of financial or family expectations. I wonder sometimes if premeds get caught up in the excitement of being picked, of winning a coveted med school slot and its not till years later the reality of their choice weighs heavily.

 

[GtownCobra]

I don't know, I don't think it's any more "arduous" than other professions out there. Sure, the learning curve is sharp, but you get ample time to soak it up (like all the fun times you spend studying on your friday nights until 11pm). Whatever, I feel way better off than my friends in the business world who constantly worry about job security, salaries, and finding the next butt to kiss. I find that stuff way more arduous.

 

[SFDendrite]

Thanks for sharing that article!

I have to admit I used to think once I'm in medical school, all my worries will disappear ("I'll absolutely love taking classes, doing rotations and anything else that medicine throws down at me").

Reality is a bit different and that's where volunteering and other experience before med school comes in. You have an idea in your head about medicine and then you test it and see for yourself if it works out for you. Even if it turns out different that what you expected it to be- oh well. Look at Patricia Wexler (stupid example but I can't come up with anyone else right now!). She went from a dermatologist to someone who is producing and advertising her own skin products...not to say that I'd ever do anything similar!

 

[alibai3ah]

I have heard this too many times, but I have a question for all the residents/med students. What would you be doing instead? And I don't mean partying, getting drunk, and having copious amounts of sex, I mean career-wise?

I may be just a pre-med, but I talked to a number of other professions, a lot of them hate their jobs. Ask laywers, engineers, teachers...everyone seems to have a problem with their career....It is called a JOB for a reason. I agree with the writer regarding the wrong reasons to go into medicine such as prestige, money, and respect; however, I do not think medicine automatically precludes you from having things like a social life, a family, and happiness...

Again I may not know what the future holds since I'm not a med student, but I really think people here need to see that lack of social life/divorce are all occurences that can happen in any career. Not JUST medicine. It's human nature to be unhappy with whatever you have. Look at people in the entertainment industry.....

 

[envirocopy512]

ttt

 

[45408]

I miss Panda Bear.

 

[addo]

love it!!!
ali bizhnit

can kiss my butt.

 

[AntiHouseMD]

I want to go into medicine because it is one of the few professions where your work directly benefits someone. I considered engineering and business, but I can't get myself interested or passionate about those jobs. I want to have a social life and have a family, but I feel I can still have that in medicine by organizing my work and making my personal life a priority.

 

[JKinSC]

I miss Panda Bear.

amen

 

[235788]

well someone has to do it, and i'd rather it be me than some humanitarian who doesn't have the brains to figure a problem out.