Is a career in medicine really worth it? - Page 8

ForeverZero · 08-11-2005, 11:42 PM

I'm glad we got that settled. I see now what you mean about med school being more in your hands. I wasn't sure what you meant by that before. So to summarize: i-banking for money, medicine for slightly less money (although still more than enough to live comfortably) and other perks, like being able to save lives.

mr_sanguine · 08-11-2005, 11:45 PM

Exactly right sir

ForeverZero · 08-11-2005, 11:51 PM

Good, glad we got that covered.

bigndude · 08-12-2005, 08:14 AM

As far as people getting their specialties, a lot of people don't get what they want. Some people want to do a cardio fellowship. But with a few hundred or thousands apps per one spot its not easy, and not everybody gets it no matter how hard they try. This also goes to say, not everyone who wants Neurosurg gets it because high scores do not guarantee it, no matter how high your scores are and no matter how much research you have, you may not get it, and you will have to settle on something else, that you may want to do but not as much as neursurg.

mr_sanguine · 08-12-2005, 10:19 AM

thats mostly only true if you are applying from an international med school (caribbean, india).

high scores and a decent med school will basically guarantee you - as far as guaranees go - that you will get the specialty you want. If you want something not as competitive, you need even less.

Again, the issue for most ppl in med school is not whehter or not they will get the specialty, but whether they'll go where they want.

ForeverZero · 08-12-2005, 10:51 AM

That's mostly true, but there are ultra-competitive specialties like derm and orthopaedic surgery, which are extremely tough to get into no matter where you come from. I've heard that to get a derm residency, it's almost required for you to have connections. There are just too many applicants for too few spots. High USMLE scores and research are often not enough. Believe it or not, most of the surgery specialties (like cardiothoracic) are actually easy to get into because many med students prefer more lifestyle-friendly and less intense specialties. So if you really want the money, it's not too difficult to find a specialty that pays well, but be warned that you'll be giving up a lot of time and energy for it.

mr_sanguine · 08-12-2005, 03:27 PM

Yeah, derm is an exception.

But for the others, like ForeverZero says, if you want to go after them you can get them.

ForeverZero · 08-12-2005, 04:12 PM

Well, not just derm, although that's by far the most competitive. Radiology, ortho, and some IM subspecialties also come to mind. There are many aspiring cardiologists who go into IM and fail to match into a fellowship, and so they're stuck with practicing general IM.

umardarr · 08-12-2005, 04:49 PM

wow...I wanna do Cardio-vascular surgery...It's so awesome, looking at the live heart beating away in front of you...either that or orthopedic surgery...or hell, maybe neurosurgery...but I'm definitely specializing in surgery.

but then again they saw as society keeps modernizing, there are more and more less invasive ways to fix things... I wonder if surgeon's will ever lose their job...

mr_sanguine · 08-12-2005, 06:34 PM

nah, those less invasive ways still take alot of expertise.

ForeverZero · 08-12-2005, 06:58 PM

Surgeons will never really lose their place in medicine, but a lot of procedures are being replaced or shifted to other doctors. Extremely risky vascular and cardiothoracic surgeries are being replaced with minimally-invasive procedures performed by interventional cardiologists and radiologists, for example. But there will always be patients who need to have complicated operations, and for them there will always be surgeons.

umardarr · 08-13-2005, 09:58 AM

what about robots? lol..may seem like a dumb question...but what if robots became so advanced that they could replace a surgeon and actually do a better job?

eternity_hope2005 · 08-13-2005, 10:44 AM

Almost everything that follows in this post concerning bad patient outcomes is patently false.

There's no backup option in medicine. Once your screwed, you're done for good. You mess up an operation and get blamed for it - if the patient still lives - you'll get sued like crazy and suspended for some time. If the patient dies, your life is over and you will get disbarred and maybe even arrested. So unless you go into medicine for nothing other than passion and love for the subject, it really is not a good idea. Can you imagine sitting home w/out a job in medicine when you trained a third of your life for it? That would be a terrible situation. In business, if your fired, so what? If I get my degree from Wharton or Chicago or Northwestern and work for an i-bank and make tons of money and then get fired later on, big deal...... I can just as easily get a job the next day. There's no disbarring or permanent b.s. I have to put up with. That's just w/ an undergrad. degree. What if I get an actual MBA or graduate business degree from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, or other top schools? You get fired here, you can go work else-where. Unless you purposely break the business laws (feduciary laws or something like that..) and do illegal things like those Enron CEO's and Martha Stewart, your flexibility is great.

I'm just trying to point out some critical factors in both subjects. Everyone here keeps talking about how grandeur and stable medicine is so I needed to point out the reality or medicine that comes w/ the job.

aehmo · 08-13-2005, 01:24 PM

"There's no backup option in medicine. Once your screwed, you're done for good. You mess up an operation and get blamed for it - if the patient still lives - you'll get sued like crazy and suspended for some time. If the patient dies, your life is over and you will get disbarred and maybe even arrested"

...hmm, that's not true. Doctors only lose cases where they genuinely screw up! If the doctor didn't do anything wrong, but the patient dies, then there no way to blame the doctor.

In fact, I haven't heard of any surgeon losing his license and never being arrested either! Remember Dr.Kavorkian??

mr_sanguine · 08-13-2005, 07:46 PM

yeah its highly untrue. That only happens when docs genuinely screw up, and the medical community makes sure that very rarely happens. We hear about it in the news only because it makes good news.

With this in mind, I'm a bit skeptical about eternity_hope's purported "immunity" in business. "If you're fired, so what?" isn't a question you should be asking. If it happens once, maybe you're ok (as long as the reason you were fired isn't too big a deal). If it happens again, things will get ugly for you.

With so many people in the business market - many with top business degrees - why would any company hire someone who has been fired? There is hardly any reason to hire someone kicked out of one company rather than an equally qualified person who hasn't been.

What's more, in business, it's much ezier to get fired for the wrong reasons. More often than not, ppl lose their jobs just because their boss doesnt like them and wont put in a good word for them at the top.

And if this happens, what are you going to say in your next interview when he/she asks you what happened at your last job? Whine about how much your boss hated you?