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Why I quit medicine

gautams.posterous.com

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Re: Why I quit medicine

#111

Post by larrys »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #89
larrys wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you basing your comments on? "The job is boring" A hospitalist deals with more difficult cases than an internist in a office based practice. "The pay is average for a smart person" Are you factoring in job security? And since when does "smart" equate to pay? There are tons of well educated "smart" people (who trained to be lawyers) who are unemployed or working menial jobs. "The doctor spends a ton of time i…

There are tons of reasons the job is rewarding, and many people who love it. People quit Google or Goldman Sachs for good reasons as well, just not the reasons I listed above. You attacked his motives for quitting, and I think you were right, but there are also motives for quitting that can't be written publicly (unless you are willing to go Greg Smith). A doctor can't write "I am dealing with a fatty with an asshole…

"A doctor can't write "I am dealing with a fatty with an asshole family and mismanaged diabetes thus now has renal failure and I have to deal with this shit" in a blog."

Total upvote for that one! Yes that is true.

"AMA" patients are quite common and frustrating. I've heard the same or similar. And of course mentally ill patients as well. I'm actually amazed at the stories I hear about families and how they treat doctors (especially woman and minorities as opposed to tall white male physicians).

I can fully understand how frustrations with the job can cause discontent. But I think that viewing the success of others (as has been pointed out by a few others here) definitely magnifies that discontent.

It takes many many years of study to become a doctor. It seems strange to me that (given they run into the "fatty patient" in other phases and should certainly know of that prior to completing training, residency etc. or even going into medicine) you wouldn't think that would be a reason for them to bail. Although yes it is possible.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#112

Post by wisty »

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…

And, once Obamacare comes in, people who actually want to be doctors (and there are enough of them) will get in.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#113

Post by [deleted] »

milesskorpen wrote: post #109
itmag wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Why I quit medicine

#114

Post by wging »

gautamsivakumar wrote: post #55
tejaswiy wrote: post #36

You're getting it wrong I think. I work in healthcare IT and many EMRs are getting on the mobile bandwagon and building out mobile clients that let you do this. Additionally, hospitals require doctors to put in diagnosis / treatment notes into EMRs which is usually done by transcribing service that the doctors can call or by sitting at a computer and typing it out. Although this process is worse than doing it over a…

Respectfully, I disagree. I think there are some institutions which do it better than others - but on the whole, from a techie standpoint, healthcare IT is in the dark ages.

You came from Britain, didn't you? The situation there is way worse because of the NHS's failed project.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#115

Post by defen »

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.

Tech? You don't even need to go to college to be a successful software engineer. No matter how smart you are, if you want to be a doctor you have to do undergrad, med school, residency. 36 hour shifts, 100+ hour weeks vs working at Google. With tech you can work from anywhere, you can choose your risk/reward exposure, and if 10 years in you decide you hate it, you don't have a mountain of debt.

In medicine's favor I will say that the median income is probably higher, the median social status is much higher, you have a much better chance of directly making a positive impact on many people's lives, and you work in a field with a more balanced gender ratio.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#116

Post by mkelley »

I work for a company in Kentucky that is currently working on developing a system (with cooperation from the Department of Health) that addresses this exact problem. Basically a multi-user application that records all aspects of each Provider's "encounter" with a given patient. A Provider could be a doctor, nurse, lab tech, etc... So at anytime the current provider for a patient has access to all previous "notes" and any other data recorded about the patient as well as who recorded that information. Though I must admit, when I first started on this project I was quite surprised that there really wasn't much out there for public healthcare providers that didn't already do this. Besides Kentucky, there are several other states showing interest as well ... I just thought I'd mention that so nobody thinks, "Oh backwards Kentucky, their doctors run around the hospital barefoot!" Apparently this is a widespread problem in the public healthcare system across the United States as well.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#117

Post by jhaile »

Putting aside income, I think tech/startup jobs are superior to medicine and law because the majority of doctors are simply analyzing symptoms and diagnosing using systems and books written by other people; the majority of lawyers are just interpreting laws written by other people. Whereas tech startups are creating and inventing solutions to problems that can improve the world. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad there are doctors out there (may not say the same for lawyers), but I'd rather be a creator/innovator than someone who is just interpreting things. Too many smart people get stuck in doctor/lawyer jobs for income/status reasons that could be having a bigger impact on the world if they were inventing new ideas and helping create a better world.

Re: Why I quit medicine

#118

Post by [deleted] »

rdl wrote: post #103
narrow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

[deleted]

Re: Why I quit medicine

#119

Post by goggles99 »

I Don't know what hospitals you guys have been in, but my primary health care for the last 12 years has been Sutter in California. The hand-offs have been electronic (custom software, not word docs) for that entire time. The Doctors now carry around a tablet as well to update info about a patient. Before the tablets, every room had a PC for updating info. Maybe Sutter is just a special case, I was surprised at the article and some of the comments here.
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