Choosing a specialty: For love or money

Robert Centor says too many students choose specialties based on lifestyle and money:

I also worry about medical student specialty choice. Too many students seem to look at money and call schedule. I guess some students lose their love for medicine, and just view it as a job. I worry that many students choose a specialty for the wrong reasons, and I predict dissatisfaction 15-20 years after finishing their residency.

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Anonymous
“I worry that many students choose a specialty for the wrong reasons, and I predict dissatisfaction 15-20 years after finishing their residency.”
I agree entirely. I strongly suggest lifestyle and call issues be a primary factor in specialty selection, especially for females, to avoid dissatisfaction after several years of practice. I will go as far as to say that the majority of females who make a career choice that involves an onerous call schedule and chaotic lifestyle will retire rather early in their careers. You really cannot have it all, male or female, there will be compromises. Choose a specialty that you love for all the right reasons, but remember in this era you are a small business owner and it is otherwise just a job at the end of the day (provided there is an end to your day!)
Anonymous
Centor has got it all wrong. Today’s med students are, all AMSA idiocy to the contrary, a largely realistic bunch. They see how much debt they are piling up and who in the hospital is happy with their lot in life and do the simple math.
You’ve got to REALLY love family medicine to volunteer to struggle with your debt your whole career while working for peanuts and getting not respect out in east bumblefark.
You want to know what i think soon to be radiologists and anesthesiologists will say 15 or 20 years from now? They may or may not think their specialty is the absolute most interesting in the world or the most important to the future of humanity, but they will have enough time and money to do something that makes them happy and still plug away at their job.
The people who chose love and went for geriatrics or some specialty with limited options for billing and no chance to take a big fat pharma bribe and leave for industry (endocrine and genetics come to mind here) will still be moaning about how crappy the compensation is 20 years from now and doing their best to dissuade their kids from making the same mistakes they made.
Anonymous
I have been in practice 15 years and virtually all of the females have “retired”. This goes for every specialty from family practice to psychiatry to ophthalmology to anesthesiology. I would tell you this applies to females I know in the banking and legal industries as well. It is simply impossible to do everything well; wife, mother, and physician. And frankly this goes for the males too; they just don’t usually realize it the way females do and in most cases will need to work to put the proverbial bread on the table. I actually believe a huge amount of health care training resources have been squandered as more of the fairer sex have entered medical school resulting in far fewer full-time equivalent practicing physicians than the numbers in training would predict.
Anonymous
Third poster: I am out about the same number of years as you and have generally the same observations. Very few of the female classmates from both my medical school and my residency training remain in full-time practice. Some have quit altogether. Most have married other physicians who appear to be supporting their family. At least one couple I know have quit the practice of medicine together, not ten years out from residency. I think that is vey telling as to the rising sense of dissatisfaction and the willingness to chuck medicine for something else.
Anonymous
I think job satisfaction for “15-20″ years is a heck of a long time. What other careers are out there that can boast the same?
and I have to agree…being in a subspecialty where you can get paid more for seeing less patients vs. a primary care specialist give you WAYYY more time to do other things that make you happy.
The trend…for good or ill, is to consider your work your work, and not your life.
Happyman
anon 6:46 said “I think job satisfaction for 15-20 years is a heck of a long time. What other careers are out there that can boast the same? “
This is a valid point, but fails to recognize the VASTLY increased years in training required before entering that 15-20yrs of time to be “satisfied”.
It’s much easier to realize longevity of job satisfaction when the training isn’t so goddamn long.

Choosing a specialty: For love or money

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