It’s awful generally, but worse for the monte residents, who I worked with directly a bit and at Jacobi. My last year of residency I was getting paid 65k/yr working 60 hours per week for 48 wks/yr (22 dollars per hour) while basically running an impromptu ICU overnight.
What really fucks everything over though is the match, and until that’s fixed it’s going to stay fucked. For those not familiar with the match, you basically apply to a bunch of programs, they interview you, you submit rank lists and the program submits rank lists. They then match you based on that.
Problem is that once you’re matched you can’t just leave without severe repercussions (like medicare won’t pay for your salary anymore) and the programs have all colluded to hold down benefits. So you’re stuck with essentially no bargaining power, likely 200k+ in debt, and a program that basically owns your rights until you can practice independently.
Someone smart enough to be a doctor has WAY better financial options in 2023. You don’t make money in many specialties until mid 30s, at which point you’ve had very low quality of life for like a decade and probably have mid 6-figures of debt.
There’s probably some luck involved in all this, like, you’re laying the foundations for your future career (particularly if it involves postgrad work) at least 5, maybe 10 years before it really starts to pay off for you.
I basically decided I wanted to be a programmer 25 years ago in high school, figuring it was a good middle class job that I really enjoyed as I was starting to learn, and got entirely & incredibly lucky that 15 years later it became like being a doctor, or lawyer, or the lower end of Wall Street banker, but with considerably less hours/toil and no equivalent to being an overworked junior associate/resident/trader.
Yea when I look at a nursing program’s cost + time investment and at least in CA you can make 100k+/year I wonder why I’d ever choose the dr. route if I wanted to be in medicine. I know traveling nurses taking down disgusting amounts of money right now, and the QoL doesn’t seem too too bad either.
would you have done differently? I would have, but not in medicine.
I dunno. I wanted to be a doctor since I was a little kid. On one hand I could have gone straight from undergrad to med school like I planned originally, but that would have making getting married and living with my wife right after undergrad a lot harder.
I definitely would have been a doctor though. Probably would have done less time playing poker professionally. How much? I’m not sure.
It might just be because it is all I really know but if my kids ever asked my opinion I wouldn’t discourage them from being doctors. A lot of the lifestyle issues can be significantly mitigated by speciality/practice setting choices these days. Would say you really do want to wait on having kids until you have some choice over how much your working and some practice settings/specialties are mostly incompatible with being a present parent so you need to know what you want in life like 7yrs before it happens which is tough for a lot of folks.
For me personally the getting yelled at or threatened by people while having to be extremely professional is honestly one of the most taxing things even though it sounds minor. Wouldn’t mind just sitting in the dark looking at MRIs some days
ETA- all that being said I think would enjoy being a software developer or some other professions as well. I think there a lot of interesting jobs in the world and I do kinda feel narrow in my work experiences
Meh… if you get the right kind of gig. You’re paid more than a resident, but you’re almost always someone else’s resident level care giver, which is tiring
It can cut out some the worst aspects of training and potentially have better hours but I have to imagine it can grind on some PAs to feel like they doing the same physical work as doctor and making a lot less. That being said being able to potentially do undergrad + 2yrs and immediately being making money is pretty nice
(That being said I’m sure some surgical specialty PAs make a good bit more than me or pediatricians)
Different watersheds, basically. All the rain’s falling in California, but it’s not been any help to the Colorado River system (like VFS mentioned the other day, Lakes Powell & Mead are ).
Dropped out of school for poker (and other reasons), then went back to nursing school at 32 and finished a degree. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
I hated working in restaurants. I hated working in sales. I don’t love all my patients, but every time I leave here I leave feeling I’m making a difference, and reducing suffering and making someone’s life marginally better. That means a lot to me.
I worked in hospitals in med/surg and emergency room. Fun, fast paced, learned a ton, definitely takes it out of you.
Now I work in a dialysis clinic. I make slightly more than I made in hospitals, and the work is sooooo much easier.
If I ever get bored, there’s no limit to what I could do, for as much or as little work as I want, anywhere I could ever want to live.
A federal jury in Virginia on Tuesday awarded $3,685 to an Army lieutenant who had asked for $1 million, alleging in a lawsuit that he was threatened, assaulted and falsely imprisoned during a 2020 traffic stop in which police officers pepper sprayed him, held him at gunpoint and told him he “should be” afraid of them.
I read they’re getting so much extra snowpack too now.