Anyone ever contemplate med school and becoming a MD?
I’ve had the strangest nagging feeling lately that I should have became a doctor
I hate the sight of blood and guts. And most of the smells. Being a doctor was never in the cards for me, though being highly paid for helping people solve their problems was a big attraction.
BTW, it should be “have become a doctor,” not “have became.”
I’ll send a bill for half your assets. Unless you have a grammar insurance policy, in which case I’ll just take your number. Always happy to help! 
I’m with bchad – finance is a better fit for me because Excel never bleeds.
My college roommate went through medical school. He has a crushing debt load, is facing negative cost trends, and is just starting to make a living wage at 30.
While helping people seems like a good idea, medical school is for the birds if you ask me. It’s better than going to law school (from a strictly ROI-basis), but unless you get involved from some entrepreneurial angle (running your own practice, which is a headache and a half) or become an elite surgeon, it doesn’t really pencil out from an economic perspective. Chicks dig the white lab coat, though.
If I had an MD, I would be trying to figure out how to double down by getting an MBA and landing at a pre-IPO diagnostics or next generation sequencing company where I could get some stock options. Ironically, the best opportunities in medicine are not actually “in” medicine – it’s on the business side riding the wave of some really interesting new technology. Of course, that’s not curing cancer, so maybe it doesn’t appeal to everyone.
Law school only makes sense if you can get into top 20 or your parents pay for it. Only thing I ever really wanted to be besides what I do now is a patent lawyer, but I stopped believing in patents and moved to this racket.
For an MD, I view helping people as a bug, not a feature.
Same. I’ve got one brother, one sister, and a brother-in-law who all work in medicine (respectively: Orthopaedic surgeon, Radiologist, Orthopaedic Surgeon) so I’m familiar with the career path and not-in-the-least interested because the the human body grosses me out. Saw my older sister’s textbooks when I was younger (textbook: TRAUMA TREATMENT: THEORY AND PRACTICE, chapter: HEAD-ON AUTOMOTIVE ACCIDENTS) and NOPE’d the hell away from that stuff immediately.
Edit: Also, the feeling is mutual. I think that what I do is the coolest stuff in the world and how could they not be interested, but they’re not. I would have better luck getting a stranger interested in my career than any of the family doctors.
when i was much younger i wanted to be an ob-gyn - the thought of probing random female anatomy really appeals to me …alas not only did i not become a obgyn i also have a gf who would frown on me setting up my own unlicensed practice
I contemplated medical school at one point. My conclusion is that the cost of admission is too high - too many years of school and too long being poor before you get to do doctor stuff. I don’t really buy into the whole “societal good” thing. Yes, we need doctors, but we also need finance people, engineers, lawyers, etc. If doctors really want to help society, they should broaden med school admissions and not run it like a cartel.
Yep, ohai is on to something. You also should not need to take advanced physics and other weed out courses that have absolutely nothing to do with being a doctor (at least that’s how it was where I went to school). The filter encourages very analytical, somewhat anti-social people to get through (no hate, I’m like that), and those people usually don’t make the best doctors. The Europeans do it much better – basically go right into med school out of high school (I think it takes longer than 4 years though). The US educational system is antiquated at best.
I also don’t believe in the societal good because of how much fraud there is in healthcare (it might be the single most fraudulent sector of the economy if the publicly traded companies are representative of the whole).
The problem with medical school is not just the selection criteria. There are not enough places for medical students in the US. This makes doctors undersupplied and overvalued in the US compared to other countries. And who is in charge of accrediting US medical schools? Yeah, you guessed it - associations comprised of doctors. I mean come on, do we really need to pay dermatologists $500k a year? Imagine if all investment bankers or S&T had to be accredited by an association comprised of GS, MS and JPM. There would be much fewer of us, but we’d all be hundred millionaires.
Plus, as you mentioned, there is the problem of education duration. The UK pumps out doctors after 5 years of total tertiary education. In the US, it takes 8 years, due to 4 years of college. Many rational people will say 8 years (not including specialization) is too much, no matter how great the job is.
People keep talking about healthcare reform to reduce costs. If you ask me, this is where we need to start.
For my part, at least, I said “helping people,” not “helping society.”
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Helping people, as in:
a) Person comes in in pain and discomfort.
b) You do something that helps make them better or sets them on a path to getting better.
c) They are (hopefully) feeling better and in a better place.
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Obviously, that’s not always possible. Telling someone that they have terminal cancer, or that they can’t have children if they want them, or that their leg has to come off because of diabetes can’t be much fun.
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Whether this helps society is a different question, but all you libertarians out there ought to be asking yourself why helping individual people doesn’t automatically add up to society being better, or why self-interested information arbitrages made possible by unequal knowledge and information about medicine doesn’t automagically turn into the greatest good for the greatest number. I agree that it doesn’t, but then again, I’m not a libertarian.
Not sure why doctors get to monopolize the “helping people” aspect of their jobs. For instance, contruction workers are needed to build hospitals, without which doctors cannot treat patients. So, the construction workers are also essential to the medical practice. Just because James is the frontman, it doesn’t mean we should ignore Kurt, Lars and Rob.
when i was younger, i wantedto be an adult actor…the chance to meet so many hot classy babes and do unclassy things is awsome…however, as i got older, i realize the pay sucks and you need to have a lot of talent…so i got into reading economics and financial statements…
you think any adult actors are like…“man, i want to get into fiannce?”
I agree that doctors help people, but so do a lot of other people without trumpeting about it. Great, you bandaged up a sprained ankle, want a trophy to commemorate your effort?
The libertarian argument is easy. Helping one individual doesn’t necessarily make society better because:
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It may have costs such that the “help” is actually a net negative. It’s not hard to see how many instances of that are true in healthcare.
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You may be allowing that individual to continue to harm society by prolonging an activity that damages society.
I’m not voting for death panels or anything, but it’s clearly case by case at best.
I’m all for helping people so long as there’s profit in it.
Lexington Steele, lee stone were previuously involved in finance before getting into porn… depends some porn male talent have had a great life…eg legendary steve holmes, rocco sifferidi etc
james dean is everywhere
as with any profession there is a pay scale spread
Ok, so since I’m being bashed for the “helping people comment,” let me clarify more.
I’m *not* saying that doctors are the only ones who help people. So anyone who is suggesting that I said that, stop right there.
I’m saying that one of the things that is nice about doctoring is that it is a well paid profession where you can help people (not society, people), and you have a good chance of getting fairly immediate feedback on the result.
I’ve experienced something like this in teaching - which of course is *not* a well paid profession - but, it does have the benefit that you see a student who doesn’t understand something, you work with them, and - more often than not - they understand things and get it and feel like they are better and more powerful than they were before. And many times, these students actually recognize how much they’ve learned and express their appreciation.
Teaching pay sucks beans, but those moments where students feel better and better equipped and recognize it are really great. So, with doctoring - if I could stand blood and guts and the smells that go along with it - the thought of feeling similarly AND being better paid than teaching is attractive.
That is what I meant about “helping people” being an attraction.
In finance, helping people make good decisions about how to manage their investments is something I like. However, it’s not quite the same, since credit for good decisions seldom sticks, and credit for bad ones (even when they’re not mine) flows down the power chain.
I know YOU aren’t saying that, but it is something that society says. You literally have t-shirts that say, “Trust me, I’m a doctor” because it is so ingrained into society… which is bullshit. Believing that all doctors are saints and deserve some revered position in society is an informational inefficiency, and I hate those 
It would be great if such things were publicly traded and you could benefit by shorting them. Instead, I just piss on doctors on public message boards.
Interesting topic. For a long time I considered to say F everything and go to med school. Opportunity cost of giving up my current job would be huge at this point, so it’s out of the table for me now. Even though during my grad school years I also built a business model which certainly would support me and my family during the endless years in med school, I think I’m just too old being in my early 30s, considering a full specialization path.
In my case I’ve found being an MD an attractive proposition because my job’s objective is to make sure one of the richest men on Earth continues that way, and my business basically takes advantage of poor people’s limited choices in life. Having a daughter who’s been recurrently ill for most of her life has made me appreciate people who actually help somebody. Of course is always easier to say, oh, I want to be a doctor, or I want to be a fireman until you actually realize their day-to-day training/job is as hard as sh!t.
bromion, point well taken. It’s not all about me.
I seriously considered going to medicine because I just think the science aspect of it is fascinating. (I’m Indian so there was certainly some parental “encouragement” as well - also being a doctor increases your chances of gettting hot classy Indian babes). But the science aspect is moot because I’m no good at working in a lab, and clinical work is ruled out because I don’t want to be looking at people’s diseases.
Also, my grades weren’t really good enough to be competitive.