MD in Business

sakky
Wed, 24 Aug 2005 23:22:15 +0000

But most people (95% approximately) that want to “rise into managment” never do.



That is true, but you can usually tell within a short period of time of working whether you have what it takes to advance in a company or not. So you spend a year working, you see what real managers do at that company, you find out you don’t like it or you don’t have what it takes. Fine, fair enough. Now you can think about going to med-school or whatever. So you delay your medical career by a year. So what? At least, now you know what you want and don’t want.

Take the alternative. You say that you should just go and become a doctor. By that I mean that you should go through the entire med-school track then followed by the entire internship/residency track, then possibly the fellowship track to become fully Board certified. After all, it is not easy to take a break in between any of those steps (i.e. it’s not like you can graduate from med-school, then take a year off working a regular job, find out you don’t like it, and then go back and get a residency and simply pick up where you left off, because your year off is going to make you less competitive for a residency slot). That’s anywhere from 7-12 years straight of medical training that you have to complete. So now, let’s say that you do that, you find out that you want to be a manager after all. Well, you just spent a lot of years getting a medical credential that you won’t really use then. Like I said, you don’t need to be a licensed medical doctor to get into management, even of a bio/pharma company.

So think about what’s efficient. You go work for a company, find out you don’t want to become a manager, so you lose a year, maybe 2. The other way is, you go through all that medical training, and then later on find out that you want to be a manager?

I’ll put it to you another way. You say that you may not know if you like being a manager. True. But on the other hand, you may not like being a practicing physician either. What happens if you go through all those years of medical training only to find out at the end that you don’t like to practice medicine? When you look at it that way, which method is really riskier?

And I said it before, I’ll say it again. Don’t go into medicine for the money. Truly. If all you care about is money, then go become an investment banker or a related occupation like asset/wealth management. Those guys make far far more money than do doctors, and with less schooling. You should go to medicine because you really want to heal people, not for the money. The money in medicine is really not all that impressive compared to all the schooling and training you need to get it.