Wouldn't want my kids to go into medicine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both my spouse and I are sub-specialists in medicine and wouldn't/don't encourage our kids to go in to medicine or be pre-med.

I don't understand why it is so in demand. The administrative grind, corporatization of medicine, unrealistic expectations of a "service industry" model, and overall lack of respect for clinicians is disheartening. This despite loving the privilege of being in patients' lives and their trust in us.

How much money you and your spouse make?

+1 OP did I miss your response to this question?

OP said 200s.

Where did OP say that? Another physician who has lawyer friends at SEC said he/she makes low 200s. This physician is not the OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money in medicine is very good especially if patients are not using insurance. I just got a quote for a breast job. $14K for a 2 hour surgery. I don’t know if another profession that can reliably make $7K in an hour.

You can’t possibly believe he pockets $7k, can you?
For a variety of reasons, this is an awful example to use. Why don’t you look at Medicaid reimbursement rates, not how much you are paying out of pocket for a boob job?

Why is it an awful example? The best paid doctors tend to be plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Their clients have disposable money and insurance may not be involved. With that said why are doctors complaining about being family or pediatric doctors? Their grades and choice determined that. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants will eventually take over those field. They have more autonomy than ever. That’s why the pay and demand for those positions isn’t what it used to be. The doctors did it to themselves.

Ugh.
I guess if your assumption is that everyone went in it for the money, then correct. Very few of the physicians we know are concierge (though they are being pushed in that direction) and actually did want to help people. The lack of respect you have towards family practice and peds, and conversely the pedestal you put plastics on, is sad.

I’d also like to add the doctors didn’t “do it to themselves” but rather insurance companies did.

Complete lack of respect. That may fade when you are diagnosed with cancer and need surgery/ chemo from the most qualified, skilled physician you can find. Hopefully you will find one who will put up with you

Family and pedantic doctors don’t work oncology cases. Oncologist do. If they don’t know what’s going on they refer you out. Once again this is why NPs and PAs are taking over. Even hospitals aren’t seeing their value and are hiring them over MDs and DOs. This why they are gaining traction with more autonomy.

Their value is that they are cheaper! They have less training and education so I wouldn’t say that equals higher quality of care. Again, anyone who says this should basically never see a doctor. Why would you see anyone dumb enough to spend 7+ years of intense training (not to mention all the pre med classes and boards) when all they needed was 2 year and some online classes?

Just because you have more education does not mean the care is better. Many hospitals feel the value in the expanded medical school education is just not there and they aren’t seeing many negative effects in using NPs and PAs over MDs. In the future I imagine that if you’re seeing a family doctor or pediatrician it will be for a specialized case not your run of the mill cold and in the future there will be less of these kinds of doctors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money in medicine is very good especially if patients are not using insurance. I just got a quote for a breast job. $14K for a 2 hour surgery. I don’t know if another profession that can reliably make $7K in an hour.

You can’t possibly believe he pockets $7k, can you?
For a variety of reasons, this is an awful example to use. Why don’t you look at Medicaid reimbursement rates, not how much you are paying out of pocket for a boob job?

Why is it an awful example? The best paid doctors tend to be plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Their clients have disposable money and insurance may not be involved. With that said why are doctors complaining about being family or pediatric doctors? Their grades and choice determined that. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants will eventually take over those field. They have more autonomy than ever. That’s why the pay and demand for those positions isn’t what it used to be. The doctors did it to themselves.

Ugh.
I guess if your assumption is that everyone went in it for the money, then correct. Very few of the physicians we know are concierge (though they are being pushed in that direction) and actually did want to help people. The lack of respect you have towards family practice and peds, and conversely the pedestal you put plastics on, is sad.

I’d also like to add the doctors didn’t “do it to themselves” but rather insurance companies did.

Complete lack of respect. That may fade when you are diagnosed with cancer and need surgery/ chemo from the most qualified, skilled physician you can find. Hopefully you will find one who will put up with you

Family and pedantic doctors don’t work oncology cases. Oncologist do. If they don’t know what’s going on they refer you out. Once again this is why NPs and PAs are taking over. Even hospitals aren’t seeing their value and are hiring them over MDs and DOs. This why they are gaining traction with more autonomy.

Their value is that they are cheaper! They have less training and education so I wouldn’t say that equals higher quality of care. Again, anyone who says this should basically never see a doctor. Why would you see anyone dumb enough to spend 7+ years of intense training (not to mention all the pre med classes and boards) when all they needed was 2 year and some online classes?

Just because you have more education does not mean the care is better. Many hospitals feel the value in the expanded medical school education is just not there and they aren’t seeing many negative effects in using NPs and PAs over MDs. In the future I imagine that if you’re seeing a family doctor or pediatrician it will be for a specialized case not your run of the mill cold and in the future there will be less of these kinds of doctors.

Again if you feel this way please refrain from seeing a doctor. Primary care is the first point of entry to the system so you need well trained ppl who can consider whether your shortness of breath is just asthma Vs a pulmonary embolism. And also, PA and NPs are filling in speciality care increasingly so. It’s about money not training. It’s a joke if you think corporate medicine cares about anything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money in medicine is very good especially if patients are not using insurance. I just got a quote for a breast job. $14K for a 2 hour surgery. I don’t know if another profession that can reliably make $7K in an hour.

You can’t possibly believe he pockets $7k, can you?
For a variety of reasons, this is an awful example to use. Why don’t you look at Medicaid reimbursement rates, not how much you are paying out of pocket for a boob job?

Why is it an awful example? The best paid doctors tend to be plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Their clients have disposable money and insurance may not be involved. With that said why are doctors complaining about being family or pediatric doctors? Their grades and choice determined that. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants will eventually take over those field. They have more autonomy than ever. That’s why the pay and demand for those positions isn’t what it used to be. The doctors did it to themselves.

Ugh.
I guess if your assumption is that everyone went in it for the money, then correct. Very few of the physicians we know are concierge (though they are being pushed in that direction) and actually did want to help people. The lack of respect you have towards family practice and peds, and conversely the pedestal you put plastics on, is sad.

I’d also like to add the doctors didn’t “do it to themselves” but rather insurance companies did.

Complete lack of respect. That may fade when you are diagnosed with cancer and need surgery/ chemo from the most qualified, skilled physician you can find. Hopefully you will find one who will put up with you

Family and pedantic doctors don’t work oncology cases. Oncologist do. If they don’t know what’s going on they refer you out. Once again this is why NPs and PAs are taking over. Even hospitals aren’t seeing their value and are hiring them over MDs and DOs. This why they are gaining traction with more autonomy.

Their value is that they are cheaper! They have less training and education so I wouldn’t say that equals higher quality of care. Again, anyone who says this should basically never see a doctor. Why would you see anyone dumb enough to spend 7+ years of intense training (not to mention all the pre med classes and boards) when all they needed was 2 year and some online classes?

Just because you have more education does not mean the care is better. Many hospitals feel the value in the expanded medical school education is just not there and they aren’t seeing many negative effects in using NPs and PAs over MDs. In the future I imagine that if you’re seeing a family doctor or pediatrician it will be for a specialized case not your run of the mill cold and in the future there will be less of these kinds of doctors.

Again if you feel this way please refrain from seeing a doctor. Primary care is the first point of entry to the system so you need well trained ppl who can consider whether your shortness of breath is just asthma Vs a pulmonary embolism. And also, PA and NPs are filling in speciality care increasingly so. It’s about money not training. It’s a joke if you think corporate medicine cares about anything else.

It’s also about outcomes. If patients who were being treated by NPs and PAs were having significantly worse outcomes or were bring into more lawsuits due to bad outcomes hospitals wouldn’t touch them. Because the outcomes are more or less the same and they are cheaper hospitals are using them over MDs. It’s just a reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP physician here who said I made less than 2 of my friends who are govt lawyers. I make in the low 200s, but it fluctuates (didn’t get bonus during Covid).

Both of my lawyer friends work for the SEC - we don’t discuss exact numbers, but it seems to me that they make around 250 - certainly not 180. I do know that both of these lawyers make more than their spouses (who are doctors - that’s how we know each other).The lawyers also WFH and only about 40 hours a week. And they talk about a pension, too.

It was so awful during Covid when we were working crazy hours, scrambling for childcare, and terrified of bringing it home to our families. All of the non-doctors appeared to view Covid like a fun vacation, and many of them still work from home!

It is true that doctors in the DMV are relatively poorly paid - if we moved to Alabama or Idaho we’d be doing much better financially. But then my spouse wouldn’t be employable.

And what’s up with the snide comment about pediatrician salaries? I’m not peds so I have no personal stake in this argument, but do you really think that it’s fair that peds is so poorly paid? Is children’s health that unimportant?

You don't need to discuss numbers because you can up their salaries. That said, most govt lawyers don't make $250K nor do most lawyers at the SEC contrary to what you read on DCUM. In fact most lawyers make less than that so you're comparing yourself to the higher paid portion of lawyers rather than average lawyers.

I work for one of the federal financial regulators. And yes, most of the attorneys I know AND managers in various areas make $250,000. It’s all publicly available.

I said most at the SEC don't make that much, I wasn't talking about other regulators although I doubt that's true since 250K is near the top of most pay scales. Even if that is true, its still not representative of fed gov lawyer salaries.

[Anonymous]

It’s pretty clear that doctors hang out with other elite school grads who went into big law or finance/finreg. Makes sense since med school is CRAZY expensive, it’s usually only UMC students who pursue. I grew up LMC, borrowing $400k for med school would seem like a plot of Austin Powers — my parents house was worth $60k, they made $30k/year.

So you have UMC students going to med school and becoming doctors, and their prep school classmates are now in finance or BigLaw or downshift to FinReg or maybe some Tech.

They don’t rub elbows with the GMU law grad working at the VA for $180k or the Fed contractor programmer making $170k and laid off at 40 because they are too old or don’t have right cloud certs.

Becoming a doctor slotted you into a lifetime guaranteed UMC job, and you are comparing the higher pay but higher turnover of the top 5% of other fields and unaware of how most in that field fare. Sure maybe you could have been a lawyer or financier, but consider how awful doctors are at investments I suspect you would wash out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money in medicine is very good especially if patients are not using insurance. I just got a quote for a breast job. $14K for a 2 hour surgery. I don’t know if another profession that can reliably make $7K in an hour.

You can’t possibly believe he pockets $7k, can you?
For a variety of reasons, this is an awful example to use. Why don’t you look at Medicaid reimbursement rates, not how much you are paying out of pocket for a boob job?

Why is it an awful example? The best paid doctors tend to be plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Their clients have disposable money and insurance may not be involved. With that said why are doctors complaining about being family or pediatric doctors? Their grades and choice determined that. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants will eventually take over those field. They have more autonomy than ever. That’s why the pay and demand for those positions isn’t what it used to be. The doctors did it to themselves.

Ugh.
I guess if your assumption is that everyone went in it for the money, then correct. Very few of the physicians we know are concierge (though they are being pushed in that direction) and actually did want to help people. The lack of respect you have towards family practice and peds, and conversely the pedestal you put plastics on, is sad.

I’d also like to add the doctors didn’t “do it to themselves” but rather insurance companies did.

Complete lack of respect. That may fade when you are diagnosed with cancer and need surgery/ chemo from the most qualified, skilled physician you can find. Hopefully you will find one who will put up with you

Family and pedantic doctors don’t work oncology cases. Oncologist do. If they don’t know what’s going on they refer you out. Once again this is why NPs and PAs are taking over. Even hospitals aren’t seeing their value and are hiring them over MDs and DOs. This why they are gaining traction with more autonomy.

Their value is that they are cheaper! They have less training and education so I wouldn’t say that equals higher quality of care. Again, anyone who says this should basically never see a doctor. Why would you see anyone dumb enough to spend 7+ years of intense training (not to mention all the pre med classes and boards) when all they needed was 2 year and some online classes?

Just because you have more education does not mean the care is better. Many hospitals feel the value in the expanded medical school education is just not there and they aren’t seeing many negative effects in using NPs and PAs over MDs. In the future I imagine that if you’re seeing a family doctor or pediatrician it will be for a specialized case not your run of the mill cold and in the future there will be less of these kinds of doctors.

Again if you feel this way please refrain from seeing a doctor. Primary care is the first point of entry to the system so you need well trained ppl who can consider whether your shortness of breath is just asthma Vs a pulmonary embolism. And also, PA and NPs are filling in speciality care increasingly so. It’s about money not training. It’s a joke if you think corporate medicine cares about anything else.

It’s also about outcomes. If patients who were being treated by NPs and PAs were having significantly worse outcomes or were bring into more lawsuits due to bad outcomes hospitals wouldn’t touch them. Because the outcomes are more or less the same and they are cheaper hospitals are using them over MDs. It’s just a reality.

You can’t really compare outcomes in the current system because NP and PAs still have alot of oversight from doctors. You’d have to have a completely independent group of NPs compared with an independent group of MDs to truly compare. It’s hard to imagine that an NP with less training could out perform an MD but it that truly was the case then there truly is no point of medical school but I doubt it since things are actually increasing in complexity and doctors now need even more training these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money in medicine is very good especially if patients are not using insurance. I just got a quote for a breast job. $14K for a 2 hour surgery. I don’t know if another profession that can reliably make $7K in an hour.

You can’t possibly believe he pockets $7k, can you?
For a variety of reasons, this is an awful example to use. Why don’t you look at Medicaid reimbursement rates, not how much you are paying out of pocket for a boob job?

Why is it an awful example? The best paid doctors tend to be plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Their clients have disposable money and insurance may not be involved. With that said why are doctors complaining about being family or pediatric doctors? Their grades and choice determined that. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants will eventually take over those field. They have more autonomy than ever. That’s why the pay and demand for those positions isn’t what it used to be. The doctors did it to themselves.

They sort of do it to themselves. Pediatricians and primary care aren’t compensated well because what compensates well is procedures. And pediatricians and family doctors try really hard not to do procedures on kids if they can help it. Because they are nice people who care more about children than making money.

They will also do things like “social rounds” where they see their patients in the hospital and check over their charts even though they aren’t the primary physician for that person while they are in the hospital and don’t get compensated.

Dermatologists and plastic surgeons agave a different way of thinking about things.
Good luck getting an early diagnosis of melanoma or facial reconstruction surgery after a car accident if you are poor.

The reason they’re not doing procedures is because it’s not in their wheelhouse. Not because they are being nice.

What?
Who do you think is staffing the PICU or the Children’s ER?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty clear that doctors hang out with other elite school grads who went into big law or finance/finreg. Makes sense since med school is CRAZY expensive, it’s usually only UMC students who pursue. I grew up LMC, borrowing $400k for med school would seem like a plot of Austin Powers — my parents house was worth $60k, they made $30k/year.

So you have UMC students going to med school and becoming doctors, and their prep school classmates are now in finance or BigLaw or downshift to FinReg or maybe some Tech.

They don’t rub elbows with the GMU law grad working at the VA for $180k or the Fed contractor programmer making $170k and laid off at 40 because they are too old or don’t have right cloud certs.

Becoming a doctor slotted you into a lifetime guaranteed UMC job, and you are comparing the higher pay but higher turnover of the top 5% of other fields and unaware of how most in that field fare. Sure maybe you could have been a lawyer or financier, but consider how awful doctors are at investments I suspect you would wash out.

Dude. I hang out with felons and meth addicts and prostitutes and literally put my finger in people’s butts. Earlier today, I met a dude who stabbed himself in the jugular with a steak knife and while I was consenting him for surgery, he told me that I probably wear my white coat when I sick my father’s ****.
Stop with acting like I never met anyone who didn’t go to prep school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have four doctors in my family. All of them went to med school straight from college. None of them have had grown up jobs other than being doctors. They all act like being a doctor is the worst job on earth.

They have no clue because they have never HAD other jobs. They've never had to try to hustle to make it in law, finance, consulting, etc. They don't know how much non medical jobs can suck as well. They are completely clueless as to how it feels to try to get a job, keep a job, worry about job security, because they have always been in demand and have never had to worry about those things.

I think this is true of many doctors. They're clueless as to how good they have it in many ways.

Seriously, they make a crap ton of money, almost guaranteed for life. They can down shift to PT when kids are in the picture, their is almost zero ageism in medicine, and never will be laid off.

Sure there are certain roles like surgery where people die on a regular basis in your hands, but your average dermatologist or rheumatologist is doing fine.

Almost nothing here is completely true.

-Doctors in Maryland make good money, but my government lawyer friends make more than I do (I'm in a speciality that is mid-range for pay). I work 50-60 hour weeks plus occasional nights and weekends (to be fair, my hours have gotten worse since Covid and the doctor shortage). Not many government lawyers have to answer phone calls all night long and then go work a 11 hour day the next day.
- not sure where you heard that we can go PT on a whim. Many hospital systems and academic centers don’t allow part time for MDs.
- non-competes are standard in medicine, so many of us are trapped in jobs that we hate because our spouse has a job in this area. To change jobs we’d have to move our family far away or to another state.
- of course there is ageism! And older doctors are well-paid, so they get pushed out first. My friend who works at Johns Hopkins said the institution was essentially forcing doctors to retire at 70 a few years ago. Not sure if they stopped due to the current shortage of doctors.
- regulations are so complex that it’s very difficult to have your own practice. Therefore, most of us on the coasts now work for a corporate overlord. They just keep squeezing us - if my workload get increaed and I’m told to “work smarter not harder!” one more time I’m going to scream.
-The training is brutal. It’s years and years of really hard work and getting yelled at and insulted. And if you screw up, someone could die. It’s hard for me to stomach my kids being treated like I was in training. I trained before the work hours regulations, and it abusive and high stakes with a lot of sleep deprivation. I’ve been screamed and sworn at, called names, and had pens books and medical instruments thrown at me by some attending throwing a temper tantrum over administrative issues or staff mistakes that were not in my purview. This kind of drama does make for good TV, but it kind of breaks your spirit in real life. I’m not as nice of a person as I think would’ve been. Like my kids would say that their teacher was mean, and I’d practically snarl at “that’s the just the way life is! Suck it up and Don’t be WEAK!” My kids say I was pretty harsh.
- Lots of doctors I know had a “real job” for 2-5 years before going to med school. We know it’s not perfect anywhere, but medicine has gotten really awful in the last 5 years and it was accelerated by Covid.

As an aside, patients don’t die on a regular basis in surgery - unless it’s a particularly high-stakes speciality like CT or trauma. (Honestly the anesthesiologists are really good at keeping people alive.) That’s just an odd thing to say… not sure you know much about the current practice of medicine.

Gov lawyers top out at $180k, are you a freaking pediatrician or something?

Ageism at 70!??? You are so out of touch.

I was going to write the exact same response. PP is the epitome of a clueless, entitled doctor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money in medicine is very good especially if patients are not using insurance. I just got a quote for a breast job. $14K for a 2 hour surgery. I don’t know if another profession that can reliably make $7K in an hour.

You can’t possibly believe he pockets $7k, can you?
For a variety of reasons, this is an awful example to use. Why don’t you look at Medicaid reimbursement rates, not how much you are paying out of pocket for a boob job?

Why is it an awful example? The best paid doctors tend to be plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Their clients have disposable money and insurance may not be involved. With that said why are doctors complaining about being family or pediatric doctors? Their grades and choice determined that. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants will eventually take over those field. They have more autonomy than ever. That’s why the pay and demand for those positions isn’t what it used to be. The doctors did it to themselves.

They sort of do it to themselves. Pediatricians and primary care aren’t compensated well because what compensates well is procedures. And pediatricians and family doctors try really hard not to do procedures on kids if they can help it. Because they are nice people who care more about children than making money.

They will also do things like “social rounds” where they see their patients in the hospital and check over their charts even though they aren’t the primary physician for that person while they are in the hospital and don’t get compensated.

Dermatologists and plastic surgeons agave a different way of thinking about things.
Good luck getting an early diagnosis of melanoma or facial reconstruction surgery after a car accident if you are poor.

The reason they’re not doing procedures is because it’s not in their wheelhouse. Not because they are being nice.

What?
Who do you think is staffing the PICU or the Children’s ER?

Pediatricians still do not do procedures. Pediatric surgeons and pediatric oncologists etc do those procedures but are first and foremost trained in surgery or oncology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty clear that doctors hang out with other elite school grads who went into big law or finance/finreg. Makes sense since med school is CRAZY expensive, it’s usually only UMC students who pursue. I grew up LMC, borrowing $400k for med school would seem like a plot of Austin Powers — my parents house was worth $60k, they made $30k/year.

So you have UMC students going to med school and becoming doctors, and their prep school classmates are now in finance or BigLaw or downshift to FinReg or maybe some Tech.

They don’t rub elbows with the GMU law grad working at the VA for $180k or the Fed contractor programmer making $170k and laid off at 40 because they are too old or don’t have right cloud certs.

Becoming a doctor slotted you into a lifetime guaranteed UMC job, and you are comparing the higher pay but higher turnover of the top 5% of other fields and unaware of how most in that field fare. Sure maybe you could have been a lawyer or financier, but consider how awful doctors are at investments I suspect you would wash out.

Dude. I hang out with felons and meth addicts and prostitutes and literally put my finger in people’s butts. Earlier today, I met a dude who stabbed himself in the jugular with a steak knife and while I was consenting him for surgery, he told me that I probably wear my white coat when I sick my father’s ****.
Stop with acting like I never met anyone who didn’t go to prep school.

I doubt you are comparing their career outcomes to yours…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have four doctors in my family. All of them went to med school straight from college. None of them have had grown up jobs other than being doctors. They all act like being a doctor is the worst job on earth.

They have no clue because they have never HAD other jobs. They've never had to try to hustle to make it in law, finance, consulting, etc. They don't know how much non medical jobs can suck as well. They are completely clueless as to how it feels to try to get a job, keep a job, worry about job security, because they have always been in demand and have never had to worry about those things.

I think this is true of many doctors. They're clueless as to how good they have it in many ways.

Seriously, they make a crap ton of money, almost guaranteed for life. They can down shift to PT when kids are in the picture, their is almost zero ageism in medicine, and never will be laid off.

Sure there are certain roles like surgery where people die on a regular basis in your hands, but your average dermatologist or rheumatologist is doing fine.

Almost nothing here is completely true.

-Doctors in Maryland make good money, but my government lawyer friends make more than I do (I'm in a speciality that is mid-range for pay). I work 50-60 hour weeks plus occasional nights and weekends (to be fair, my hours have gotten worse since Covid and the doctor shortage). Not many government lawyers have to answer phone calls all night long and then go work a 11 hour day the next day.
- not sure where you heard that we can go PT on a whim. Many hospital systems and academic centers don’t allow part time for MDs.
- non-competes are standard in medicine, so many of us are trapped in jobs that we hate because our spouse has a job in this area. To change jobs we’d have to move our family far away or to another state.
- of course there is ageism! And older doctors are well-paid, so they get pushed out first. My friend who works at Johns Hopkins said the institution was essentially forcing doctors to retire at 70 a few years ago. Not sure if they stopped due to the current shortage of doctors.
- regulations are so complex that it’s very difficult to have your own practice. Therefore, most of us on the coasts now work for a corporate overlord. They just keep squeezing us - if my workload get increaed and I’m told to “work smarter not harder!” one more time I’m going to scream.
-The training is brutal. It’s years and years of really hard work and getting yelled at and insulted. And if you screw up, someone could die. It’s hard for me to stomach my kids being treated like I was in training. I trained before the work hours regulations, and it abusive and high stakes with a lot of sleep deprivation. I’ve been screamed and sworn at, called names, and had pens books and medical instruments thrown at me by some attending throwing a temper tantrum over administrative issues or staff mistakes that were not in my purview. This kind of drama does make for good TV, but it kind of breaks your spirit in real life. I’m not as nice of a person as I think would’ve been. Like my kids would say that their teacher was mean, and I’d practically snarl at “that’s the just the way life is! Suck it up and Don’t be WEAK!” My kids say I was pretty harsh.
- Lots of doctors I know had a “real job” for 2-5 years before going to med school. We know it’s not perfect anywhere, but medicine has gotten really awful in the last 5 years and it was accelerated by Covid.

As an aside, patients don’t die on a regular basis in surgery - unless it’s a particularly high-stakes speciality like CT or trauma. (Honestly the anesthesiologists are really good at keeping people alive.) That’s just an odd thing to say… not sure you know much about the current practice of medicine.

Gov lawyers top out at $180k, are you a freaking pediatrician or something?

Ageism at 70!??? You are so out of touch.

Im this PP — wasn’t a dig at pediatricians, just they are famously underpaid, because they work with lots of uninsured patients, have a passion for the job, and are usually women which means they are screwed financially. Obv I love what they do!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both my spouse and I are sub-specialists in medicine and wouldn't/don't encourage our kids to go in to medicine or be pre-med.

I don't understand why it is so in demand. The administrative grind, corporatization of medicine, unrealistic expectations of a "service industry" model, and overall lack of respect for clinicians is disheartening. This despite loving the privilege of being in patients' lives and their trust in us.

More and more physicians are coming to this conclusion, not if its kid's calling but if kid is only picking it because it offers money and prestige or because its their family occupation.

It takes over your life from high school, you pour in lots of time, energy, effort and money but you don't get an attending paycheck for 10+ years. It puts marriage and kids on hold and effects your personal and social life.

Once attending, you still have to deal with administrators, insurance, mid-levels- liability, malpractice etc. Some specialities are better than others and money is great but overall not worth it unless you really like the field.

[Anonymous]

Its still a great way to earn lots of money and make a lot of difference but know that not everyone is earning big bucks nor making big difference.