K31795, on 15 December 2012 - 08:22 PM, said:
1. I am not unhappy in my profession, but I agree with everything in this "rant". I think it is an accurate assessment of medical training, though I believe it was written pre 80 hour work week. For someone like the OP who is undecided about medicine I hope it is helpful. Again, I love what I do, but it is not for everyone -- there are sacrifices upon sacrifices that most pre-meds just do not understand.
I find it interesting that you rag on this rant yet you admit to burning out as a surgical resident...I completed 5.5 years of a brutal ortho residency and I find every bit of it to be true.
2. I agree. But how does declining reimbursements (Medicare cuts) and more patients to see bode for physicians who are already over-worked? How do my colleagues in primary care survive when they already barely covering overhead now?
I agree with your last two paragraphs.
1. Yes, there are sacrifices. Which is I why I told the OP that he need to explore his other career interest if he wasn't passionately in love with the sciences and the idea of caring for other people. This job is just too hard, and takes too much out of people if there isn't that fire to sustain you.
You will never find a career where there are no sacrifices. You know you are in the RIGHT career, when you like what you are doing so much that you live with the sacrifices you are called upon to make, and can still be happy in your job and in your life.
2. I burned out as an ortho resident myself (pre 80 hours) because of the lack of restraint on working conditions (I worked 240 consecutive days without a day off between my PGY-2 and 3 years.) and because I made a bad career (specialty) choice. I chose a career (and a program) that demanded singular focus..when I am personality that needs a more balanced life. I went to the point of burnout because I was in a situation where people kept telling me that I was the problem...rather than a mismatch between me and my situation being the problem. Because the people I was working for were similarly out of balance, with many of them on the verge of burnout themselves.
When I switched to a specialty that was more suitable to my termperment and needs--and worked for more FUNCTIONAL people---I flourished and never looked back. Which is why whenever I'm mentoring students I always emphasize that they have to have a clear idea of what kind of life they want to live...THEN choose the job they like that will fit into that lifestyle...and not try to fit their life around a job simply because it is interesting. I tried to do that, and got three of the most miserable years of my life for my troubles.
The issue isn't the hours or the sacrifices. Its matching the right people to the right job...and in my case orthopedic surgeon and myself were a poor fit. Because one of the happiest guys in my department is a guy who probably spends more time in the hospital and in the lab than I spent on the wards when I was burning out as an ortho resident. But the guy is happy because he eats, sleeps, breathes and sweats-out-of-his pores anesthesiology. He's doing what he loves to do, and he has a spouse who is willing to support him in his single-minded devotion to it.
God bless him. The world needs guys like him. It just doesn't need people like ME trying to PRETEND to myself and the world...that I'm just like him. Been there. Done that.
Epic fail.
3. That's an issue for addressing WHAT gets compensated in medicine, and how much. Procedures get paid to much. Primary care/office care too little. As a result (in any capitalist system) you get what you
incentivize. So we have too many procedure-oriented specialists, and too few primary care docs. But that is WAAY beyond the scope of this thread.
Edited by kellygreen, 15 December 2012 - 09:29 PM.
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