Majors/careers for a kid who wants money and work/life balance
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Anonymous
NP. All my physician friends in our 50s are in various mode of burnout mitigation or recovery. Most pervasive sentiment is loss of autonomy in clinical practice, especially in ambulatory medicine. Sure, hours are fine (8 hrs of clinic). But every year, hospital C-suite administrators and even academic departments (ie not private equity owned private practice) take away clinician's scheduling flexibility and force docs to add more patient slots or double book every hour. I miss the days I used to 'only' have 24 patients on my schedule. Now, it's 30+. Imagine having 30 meetings in one day with 30 notes to complete, only to go home and have an inbox full of time-sensitive messages you did not have time to open during the course of the said 30 meetings. Even if I find the medical aspect intellectually rewarding and fulfilling, I am simply drained every day, every weekend, and because it never ends, it becomes a grind. The happiest physician friend is a neurosurgeon. Maybe things are different for surgeons with better nursing or PA support. |
Anonymous
Same here! we are getting pushed to demonstrate its capabilities at my workplace and when it comes to math and analysis it fails every time. Or the prompts need to be so detailed and long they are not time saving. |
Anonymous
| I think doctors that do concierge medicine have more control of their hours and avoid burnout and they get paid cash instead of insurance. I know an OB/gyn who switched to concierge - now she does mostly menopause and women’s ‘wellness’ , no longer does OB, and only the most minimal surgeries - now she has a great lifestyle and really great $$ |
Anonymous
| Get adopted by a billionaire. |
Anonymous
they do not have work/life balance. Crime doesn't stop at 5pm and then restart at 8am. |
Anonymous
80 hours in a week is still a ton. I worked 90 hours a week for three months once and was a complete zombie by the end. Was significantly less productive past 60 hours as well to be honest. |
Anonymous
AI can do the first draft now, though. Engineers should be decent enough at implementing AI in law. |
Anonymous
Not wanting to fall into the trap of working ten or eleven hours a day, or checking in on weekends doesn't mean someone doesn't want to work hard. |
Anonymous
Another new poster, physician couple as are the majority of my multi-specialty group practice. Two physicians in the past 20 years have retired or left medicine due to burnout earlier than planeed. All of the others have retired when they planned to, often at age 58-65 due to having plenty saved, some work past 70 by choice because they love it. Residency as PP says is easier now, 80 hr a week average, for 75k-80k annually, whereas it was 27-30k in 2000-2003 and there were no hour caps (changed around 2003-4). Adjusting for rent in my med school in the mid atlantic and spouse's in boston, the resident salary is significantly better. The hours are mixed differently, but overall better. 80hr average remains difficult. Nothing is as hard as residency. Dermatology friends make 450+k. Many docs (peds, endocrine, gyn, plastics) we know are part time(33-35 hrs a week, or 3 full days, not 45-50) and make 200-300k as Part time (peds is the lower one). The subspecialists in our multigroup as well as the hospital owned colleagues we have in other parts of midatlantic to northeast make 500+k full time if they want to maximize to 30 patients a day plus maximal procedures. They do not have to do that. That puts someone at the top 10% of production. 95% of medical practice is RVU based: your pay is based on the work you do. It has been like this for the majority of the past 20 years, not new. Yes there are bonuses given at large hospital based groups for the top producers but you can choose not to chase those. At teaching hospitals your research funding is part of your salary, but you often have days dedicated to research rather than seeing 22-30 patients 4.5 days a week. There are plusses and minuses to the different models, salarywise and lifestylewise. These are all choices medical residents make when starting their job search. Internal med "max" production in our group makes 450k (no procedures) for 4.5 weekdays, 26 pt a day is the max our schedule holds for IM, and no weekends. That salary and those hours/volumes are fairly standard for the top producing IM docs across the region and up the coast. Those of us who want better lifestyles and ability to leave work 4:30pm on our long weekdays, or block for school events for our kids, still have one weekday as a half-day (full-time schedule is 4.5), zero weekends, "settle" for the average production salary of around 360k. 360k is plenty of money for one person especially when the spouse is also making similar as a doc. While I love my job and have great work-life balance as do most colleagues, it is not a job for someone like OP who sounds as though they don't want to work hard yet want the big money. When residency is 3-6 years after 4 yrs of med school after 4 yrs of working hard to get almost all As undergrad while doing research and volunteering, it is not an easy path to big $. I have never heard of anyone with a lot of $ who coasted. We have lawyers who worked their butts off for years to have a good life balance now, private equity friends and those who started and sold companies who have great lifestyles at 50 but most certainly worked their butts off in the early years, more than 80 hrs per week. |
Anonymous
That's far from OP's kid |
Anonymous
NP What's your view of a business degree with data science minor? Or is full data science the way to go? And these guys also need to be able to write well and communicate, otherwise that data isn't helping. |
Anonymous
I work with data scientists and do the communication piece—they really don’t have to do that. TBH the best ones come out of hard sciences, not data science. I think it’s a problematic field in terms of job prospects. |
Anonymous
That’s exactly my kid. — OP |
Anonymous
surgeon mom from before - interesting post to read about different specialties. salaries aside, my head would explode seeing 30 pts/day, 4 days/week. kudos to you. i do enjoy clinic but it's bc i only have 1-2 4 hour clinics/week where i see ~ 10 pts (mix of new, post-ops, and established). i operate 1-2 days/week (those are longer 10-12h days) and teach ~ 1 day/week so it's a really nice mix in my view. i can't imagine having 100+ notes to write, when it's hard enough for me to get through 10! |
Anonymous
This is why my brain feels fried, with a permanent glare of EPIC on my retina. For PP who suggested concierge medicine, it's not a solution for every physician. One has to contend with customer service that are more 'clients' and less 'patients.' OP - If your child is interested in health care, there are other less stressful jobs, like PA, nutritionist, PT/OT, therapists, neuropsychologist, etc. With experience, I think these providers can command good salary in private practice. |