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Why I quit medicine

gautams.posterous.com

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Re: Why I quit medicine

#101

Post by vuvuzealot »

defen wrote: post #99
peterbessman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... hackers are usually incredibly naive about compensation outside of their own world. For reference: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2011... Bottom line: here in the US of A, your average doc (most certainly NOT an outlier) is making between $150k and $350k. Put that in your VC-backed pipe and smoke it. (Debt? Between $150k-$200k for 4 years of med school. Post med school training, in th…

There's also the part where you spend your 20's in med school/internship/residency. Hard to put a dollar value on that. There's obviously nothing inherently wrong with it, but it takes a certain kind of person. And you had better be damn sure you want to do medicine before committing to such a program.

What lucrative or otherwise worthwhile profession do you not waste your youth toiling away in? Other than trust fund custodian of course.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#102

Post by re_todd »

vuvuzealot wrote: post #101
defen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the part where you spend your 20's in med school/internship/residency. Hard to put a dollar value on that. There's obviously nothing inherently wrong with it, but it takes a certain kind of person. And you had better be damn sure you want to do medicine before committing to such a program.

What lucrative or otherwise worthwhile profession do you not waste your youth toiling away in? Other than trust fund custodian of course.

Good point. Even with a Bachelors in Computer Science, it can be hard to make the industry average until you have at least 5 years experience.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#103

Post by rdl »

narrow wrote: post #85
gautamsivakumar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for your support. You're right about how important face-to-face interaction is. That is not going to be replaced any time soon - nor should it be. But for the purpose of handover, you still need a written summary of all the patients on a ward that people can refer to. As I mentioned in the post, it would be useful to see who wrote what about each patient - so that you know who to talk to for further in…

Really nice response, I think what most people often fail to realize is that it's not always about the money. True entrepreneurs are terrible at handling discomforts worst of one that could easily be fixed. I left a six figure salary in the medical field, sold my bmw and moved to SV from the east-coast to fix a problem that costs this country $300 billion annually in additional healthcare costs. It's about finding th…

I'm curious which $300 billion problem this is (there are several in healthcare...)

Re: Why I quit medicine

#104

Post by tomwalker »

in scotland I worked in a hospital and would have to print out blood results on a daily basis for, on average, 20 patients. Some weeks it could easily be 60 patients.

To do this would take about 6 clicks and due to the slow system about 40 seconds I figured out. There would commonly be a queue in the morning to use this computer.

I made a simple script on a pen drive that allowed me to print my bloods for patients I had on a list of 'my patients'

i got a slap on the wrist :(

Re: Why I quit medicine

#106

Post by itmag »

jonnathanson wrote: post #77
peterbessman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... hackers are usually incredibly naive about compensation outside of their own world. For reference: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2011... Bottom line: here in the US of A, your average doc (most certainly NOT an outlier) is making between $150k and $350k. Put that in your VC-backed pipe and smoke it. (Debt? Between $150k-$200k for 4 years of med school. Post med school training, in th…

And that's to say nothing of big cities. $750k may be an outlier in Eastern MD, but it's not uncommon for specialists in NY or LA to clear $1M easily. True outliers can climb north of there. Medicine is still an extremely reliable way to become everyday rich, if not outrageously so. It beats the pants off of corporate jobs, and it beats law on average (though law outliers tend to beat medicine outliers). It loses out…

I'm curious about those outliers. Are there any shared traits that can be identified?

Re: Why I quit medicine

#107

Post by ig1 »

tibbon wrote: post #30
gamble wrote: post #2

Sounds a lot like the medical data startup I joined ten years ago. We were so, so painfully naive about the realities of medical software. Medical records are a trivial technical problem, but an almost insurmountable political and regulatory challenge. I knew our company was doomed when we were talking to another medical software company and saw the literal wall of binders that represented a single FDA approval proce…

While Obama and Congress are talking about how to make regulation more business friendly, why don't they focus on day-1 problems like this, instead of IPO problems? I've never heard of a good company unable to IPO just due to paperwork/regulation, but I've heard of many company not be able to get anywhere due to silly regulatory cruft. See the TacoCopter yesterday... FAA would never let it happen. Or your medical dat…

Look at the stats post-SOX the number of IPOs in the US collapsed and most international companies started choosing to list in London rather than NY.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#108

Post by itmag »

localhost3000 wrote: post #100
peterbessman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... hackers are usually incredibly naive about compensation outside of their own world. For reference: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2011... Bottom line: here in the US of A, your average doc (most certainly NOT an outlier) is making between $150k and $350k. Put that in your VC-backed pipe and smoke it. (Debt? Between $150k-$200k for 4 years of med school. Post med school training, in th…

take an evening and go have drinks with some current med students / residents - here's what you'll hear (not from all, but from many): "Obamacare is killing my profession!"..."i should've gone to b-school instead"..."i could be working at GS but now i'm busting my ass for $50k"..."i'm getting screwed! this is sooooo unfair! how am i going to survive this debt?!"...so, the problem isn't that they don't make a great li…

Sounds like unworthy people who are just clamoring for status (which income is a proxy for) instead of figuring out who they are as individuals and what their life purpose is.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#109

Post by milesskorpen »

itmag wrote: post #106
jonnathanson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's to say nothing of big cities. $750k may be an outlier in Eastern MD, but it's not uncommon for specialists in NY or LA to clear $1M easily. True outliers can climb north of there. Medicine is still an extremely reliable way to become everyday rich, if not outrageously so. It beats the pants off of corporate jobs, and it beats law on average (though law outliers tend to beat medicine outliers). It loses out…

I'm curious about those outliers. Are there any shared traits that can be identified?

Most are likely specialist surgeons -- neurosurgeons and cardiothoracic surgeons and going to pull in big money. The trade off is a (really) long residency, of course.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#110

Post by peterbessman »

vuvuzealot wrote: post #101
defen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the part where you spend your 20's in med school/internship/residency. Hard to put a dollar value on that. There's obviously nothing inherently wrong with it, but it takes a certain kind of person. And you had better be damn sure you want to do medicine before committing to such a program.

What lucrative or otherwise worthwhile profession do you not waste your youth toiling away in? Other than trust fund custodian of course.

This. And resdency is not the life destroyer people make it out to be anyway. You can find plenty of single residents in the bars of Baltimore. Whatever the demands of their program may be, its not like they're spending a year on an aircraft carrier or whatever. There are certainly downsides to the gig, but the "overworked and underpaid" idea really needs a reality check.
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