I Hate being a Doctor
Do I regret being a Doctor? YES Probably every day.
Regrets of being a Doctor hits me when…
- A person readily paying Rs 500 to a plumber, for tighten a leaking tap, is reluctant to pay Rs. 300 as doctor’s consultation fees.
- When a patient argues – “ Why are you charging me for just Examining and writing on a piece of paper?
- The patient comes to my clinic at odd times, but not a word of gratitude falls my ears sparing my personal time to tend to their pains at odd times.
- If we prescribe tests and investigations, the patient tell that we are writing unnecessary tests. If we don’t and unfortunately the patient develops some complication later, they sue us alleging “Negligence”.
- When after attending to an extremely sick patient, endlessly for days and nights, unfortunately when they pass away, because at that time we could do nothing to save life, the patient’s relatives abuse doctors, badmouth us, disgrace us. Sometimes they get violent too.
- When after a hundred times treating a patient to their full satisfaction, if once they don’t get better with our prescription, we get labelled as a quack, and our reputation is subjected to ridicule.
Yess I hate being a doctor…. Here is why i hate myself for being a doctor :
Workload during training days.
• Pg residents are most overworked & tired Person in this whole Milky way galaxy.
Competitive Nature
Doctors are competitive in Nature ; so be aware from them, you little baby.
They may appear very friendly, but are full of competitive nature as during their training they have to face lots of competitions. So competitive nature is in there blood.
Depressed
Most of the doctors are depressed & sad ; i don’t know why. You can also find negative answer on quora but please ignore them. I think the best profession in world is a- burger stall & not doctori.
Our Sleep ?
Doctors don’t get sleep. But how can you enjoy your cushy salary when you barely have any time at all? Doctors wake up in the early mornings and come home late at night. And I mean really really late at night. They just don’t have time to enjoy themselves. Unfortunately, this also places a huge strain on their loved ones. It’s hard to raise kids and foster your marriage when you have to keep running back and forth to the hospital. There will be a lot of personal sacrifices, and sometimes, you will wonder if it was ever worth it.
About Money ?
They don’t make as much money as you think they do.To be clear, Doctors certainly make a healthy living. Physicians earn around 150k and surgeons can earn up to 500k (eg. orthopaedics). However, keep in mind that this salary only kicks in if you get past residency (which is notoriously difficult). Moreover, you’ll still be drowning in debt. Undergraduate debt. Medical school debt. Your living expenses. Loans from the bank. You would have to be in your 40’s to break-even from the near 200-300k accumulated debt before you can enjoy the spoils.
Poor Doctors during Training
Doctors live their 20s and 30s in abject poverty. I have a bunch of med school friends who simply don’t earn any money at all during their 15 year stretch. That means no money for housing, food, clothes, cars, gas, and basic necessities. Plus, those medical textbooks aren’t cheap either. Your aging parents are going to have to pay for the bulk of your adult life, and moreover, you would have to take on several minimum wage jobs to chip in. That means at the age 25-30, you could be waiting tables, washing cars, or delivering newspapers. For all the glory there is to be a medical student, you’ll still be mopping floors and flipping burgers.
In a Nutshell…
- Doctors sacrifice the majority of their 20’s and early 30’s trying to pass rigorous exams throughout their undergrad, medical education, and residency. If they fail any component during this process, then they simply cannot become a doctor. It is a solid 15 year commitment of doing nothing but medicine. And you absolutely cannot fail. The line between success and failure is clearly defined in medicine, and it is merciless if you can’t make the cut.
- It’s not as gratifying as you think it is to help sick people. You’re probably imagining a life-saving heart operation. The calm hum of neurosurgery. A smiling old lady or a boy with a fractured arm. You’re imagining how great it would be to save lives. For the most part, that’s wrong. Sick people are fat. Sick people smell. They have vomit. They have stab wounds, punctures, pus, sores, and mucus. And most of all, they’re ungrateful. A disturbing number of former patients will take it upon themselves to sue doctors for bullshit malpractice lawsuits, and because of this, doctors can lose their license to practice medicine. That’s 15 years down the drain because of an ungrateful patient who can’t appreciate someone trying his best to save his life.
Now, let’s take a look at business ( Business vs Medicine )
• Business makes more money than medicine. Business will always outrank medicine in money. To be fair, the average doctor will beat out the average employee working in some random HR department of a company. However, if you look at the salaries of those people working in investment banking, hedge funds, private equity, and big tech … you can see business winning out by huge margins. You earn money straight out of college, and if you save up for the next decade, you will have 200k in savings vs. 200k in medical school debt. Big difference in life. It’s the difference between a flight to Hawaii or a day spent studying and waiting tables.
• Business has social status. Sergrey Brin? Larry Page? Steve Jobs? Elon Musk? Peter Thiel? Mark Zuckerberg? Bill Gates? Larry Ellison? I came up with these names off the top of my head. Name me 10 famous doctors. Exactly.
Now, you might be saying that these people are rare exceptions and there’s no way you could ever match their success. Before you conclude that, I want you to spend the next 15 years studying economics, business, and coding everyday. If you don’t think you can be relatively successful in business with that work ethic, what makes you think you can become a successful doctor?
• Business arguably impacts more people than medicine. A surgeon can only save the amount of people he treats. An internist can only diagnose the amount of people that comes through those hospital doors. But business…business has changed the world. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Renaissance, Twitter. These technologies and funds have touched the lives of billions of people, for good or for worse
Takeaway: You were probably raised up in a society that valued becoming a doctor. However, times have changed. The old guard is being moved. The hottest careers are now in tech and business. New companies are starting everyday, and each of these companies produce innovation and technology capable of changing the very way people interact.
It’s an exciting place to be if you got the determination and work ethic for it.
But it’s your call. Your destiny and your fate. Get a whiteboard out and write down things you want to accomplish/have in life, and then chart out a path to get there. And most importantly, read a lot of books at the library. Knowledge is power.
Is becoming a Doctor worth the sacrifice?
If you ask my generation they would say in one breath a big NO may be we have still to see the monetarily comfortable side of it…I’m being cynical but will state the truth which many people here won’t like…The generation before us belonged to a different India where India was still developing developing ..every professional was trying to make his or her mark be it an engineer or a doctor…they took pride in being a doctor ,the stethoscope was a show of pride..and being a good doctor always paid dividends in terms of respect fame as well as money…people in india loved doctors respected them and at the same time looked upto them…Over the last few years india has developed the doctors aren’t the nerds but smart and commercially enterprising …they want to make money ,have a good lifestyle have the name as well as fame …on the flip side because of this the common man thinks that doctors just know how to loot the common public…and all they want is money.
I started my dream of becoming a doctor when I was barely 16 …slogged for my common entrance test …studied hard for five and a half years …studied again to get into pg …worked again for three years …started doing fellowships …I’m 29 now …my friends who were engineers and MBAs are enjoying their lives and have seen more countries and places than me …Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp etc acts as a medium of looking at what people are doing and u can’t till date I earn a meagre amount can’t imagine a lavish holiday ….im not lamenting my faith the money shall flow but when I will look to earn for what’s my right I’ll be potrayed as robber…Do we point towards expensive lawyers investment bankers and say how much they charge ….i worked all my youth to give quality …shouldn’t I expect quality but that won’t happen as I know there will be people commenting on me being a thief..!!!Reality is I love my job but fear the future …I want to save lives but I deserve to earn and not live like a popper…