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Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

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Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#101

This is very inspirational. I'm applying to emergency medicine residency this year and love to see stories about how much people enjoy it. I'm curious what skills cross over from CEO to EM physician. Leadership and teamwork for sure.

David Lee Roth becoming an EMT might be of interest to you >> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffabernathy/2019/03/07/cross-...

Awesome! Thank you for sharing!

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#102

This is very inspirational. I'm applying to emergency medicine residency this year and love to see stories about how much people enjoy it. I'm curious what skills cross over from CEO to EM physician. Leadership and teamwork for sure.

Anaesthesiologist here. I did EM for 6 months and hated it. This is because it just doesn't suit my personality. To be good at EM you need to be: - Comfortable with being a kinda bad at everything and great at nothing - Comfortable with large amounts of uncertainty and risk and having to make decisions anyway - Being abused by drunk/mentally ill patients constantly - Being patronized by medical colleagues in other sp…

Thanks for sharing your experience! As a medical student, it is pretty difficult to get a decent feel for each specialty (as you know). I'm glad you were able to switch into something that fit you better. Have you ever considered anesthesia critical care? It seemed interesting from the little time I experienced it.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#103
post #79
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that getting a PhD can be so political and soul destroying that only those that really need or want it or have no other better options make it through. Not sure how universal that is though.

I did my PhD in the French Riviera. Some people were maxing out the extensions on their funding not because they couldn't defend on schedule, but they simply enjoyed their current work. But that might speak more to the misery of postdoc, than to the joy of PhD? I remember doctoral studies very fondly. But finished on time and moved to the industry, because once you graduate, the academic job market is outright depres…

Eurecom?

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#104
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sufficient" meaning "Extraordinary"? The data doesn't really show that being hard working correlates with creation of wealth. In addition, it seems wealth plays a larger role in medical school acceptance than one might expect/hope for. "The AAMC explains that the percentage of medical students from families in the highest quintile of household income has not dropped below 48 percent since 1987—half of students come…

Correlation or causation?

It’s classism, and it’s reality. Correlation and causation are irrelevant.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#105
post #96

I've always dreamed of leaving behind Silicon Valley and pursuing emergency medicine. I need to stay the course for a while to ensure my college approaching kids are taken care of but stories like this are inspiring reminders that age doesn't have to be a factor when I finally decide to make the move.

Resident physician here. I have > $200,000 student debt. Doesn't feel good at all.

The US experience is not good.

I’m a resident in Australia. 11 years at university (took some side tracks), $70k in debt for the whole time, now gone, and we are paid between $70-110k a year as interns.

Although our training pathways are longer because we are required to do 2 generalist years

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#106
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's amazing! Agreed. Now imagine being a similarly aged retail service worker, or agricultural laborer, and doing the same. Even more amazing, if rare. The point is: both the drive and capital are needed. This person clearly had both at their disposal.

Sufficient drive begets the requisite capital, but that's even more rare, and arguably more amazing.

That's a bit of a tautology, isn't it? Of course sufficient drive begets the requisite capital, since any amount of drive which fails to beget the requisite capital is, by definition, insufficient :)

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#107

This is very inspirational. I'm applying to emergency medicine residency this year and love to see stories about how much people enjoy it. I'm curious what skills cross over from CEO to EM physician. Leadership and teamwork for sure.

Anaesthesiologist here. I did EM for 6 months and hated it. This is because it just doesn't suit my personality. To be good at EM you need to be: - Comfortable with being a kinda bad at everything and great at nothing - Comfortable with large amounts of uncertainty and risk and having to make decisions anyway - Being abused by drunk/mentally ill patients constantly - Being patronized by medical colleagues in other sp…

I hated EM as a student and for my first couple of rotations. I was streaming for surgery and couldn’t understand why Thr emergency department kept making such stupid admissions for us.

By the time I’d seen a couple thousand patients in the ED, I was much more comfortable and now intend to complete training there (also, I can do it part time given my other commitments). I’d prefer to be ok at most things (ie retain my general medical knowledge) and good at critical care but that’s more because I work so infrequently now, and have found that I value being a generalist... abuse of ED docs decisions be damned!

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#108
post #87
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but I don't know a single doctor in the US who actually paid it upfront instead of taking out all those loans and then easily paying them back with their newfound doctor salary later.

Yeah, the only people that I know who don't have >400000 in loans with a >5% interest rate coming out of residency have wealthy parents who paid for everything, did the military's HPSP program [1], or did a free 7-year MD/PhD program. It's an interesting process. [1] https://www.medicineandthemilitary.com/joining-and-eligibili...

Plenty of medical schools give need-based financial aid. So those folks who took out loans probably came from pretty well-off middle class families.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#109
OT but does anyone have insight into why there are so few med schools in the US? There are way more prospective students than admissions slots. Are there high capital costs or something I haven't considered that make starting a med school unprofitable even with average tuition fees being so high?
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