There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel:
“I think that it is safe to say that no physician is optimistic about the future of medicine at this point,” one participant wrote. Others seemed downright hopeless: “One thing that rarely gets mentioned is that, unlike other industries that are cyclical, the practice of medicine continually gets worse and worse, more intolerable, more onerous, with absolutely no hope or reason for any optimism either in the near or remote future.”
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{ 8 comments }
So get out.
I did it – and so can you if really want to.
I’ve interviewed for and been offered jobs in 4 different non-clinical industries – medical software development, utilization review and denial managment (fighting insurance denials), pharmaceutical drug safety (pharmacovigilance), and life insurance medicine.
It can be done – and most of these offer salary and benefits greater than that of straight primary care.
How does one get into any of those fields? Right now, I’m pretty satisfied with neuropsychiatry, but one can never be too well-prepared.
Everyone realizes things are bad and will get worse. Successful people adapt. Start a business on the side. Stop buying new luxury cars. Tell your wife you can’t afford the house with a second bathroom. Tell your children you will pay up to what a public college will cost and if they want to go private, they’ll take out loans.
What happened is that we dedicated ourselves to a 10 year plan of difficult college classes, medical school and residency in exchange for what we thought was a stable job with fair pay. The only reason we did that was because we were 18 and stupid. Who signs a 10 year contract?
Anyone who got into medical school is smart enough to come up with a family budget, pay off their debts and start a side job. Realize that medicine is not a long term plan and you have solved half of your problem.
On a national level, this creates a problem unless you can delude another generation of teenagers into trading their best years for organic chemistry and the anatomy lab. I don’t think that will happen. Therefore, we’ll have genius investment bankers and mortgage brokers, while your children will be diagnosed and treated by well meaning C students. However, that is not a problem I can solve,….
b
“What happened is that we dedicated ourselves to a 10 year plan of difficult college classes, medical school and residency”
For most of us, it’s a 11-14 year plan.
I find that the anger and frustration I have with the screwed up health care system helps me. it allows me to order all the ridiculous tests I order to cover my ass, it allows me to admit 23 year olds for chest pain “just in case”. If i wasn’t angry I may practice reasonable, logical medicine then i would miss the rare “zebra” and get sued for a bad outcome. The way things are currently I am so angry and frustrated I over-test to the max and lessen the likelihood I’ll miss something, or at a minimum spread the responsibility by involving so many other doctors in consult.
So get out. You come on here and cry every day Anonymous. You threaten to leave to go to another country, etc. etc.
Well do it. No one is stopping you.
“So get out. You come on here and cry every day Anonymous. You threaten to leave to go to another country, etc. etc. “
No. I think I’ll stay and irradiate all your sorry butts with my CT Scans until some of you glow. That’s my payback for having to sit in court and have to listen to sume moron asshole tell me what a moron asshole I am.
The veneer of “medical kindness”… so easily wiped away.
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