This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Erin McGuire, MD Doctor of Medicine & Seattle Children's Hospital, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine (1... Medicine is changing a great deal right now. Becoming administration heavy, more of a business than care model, and for almost all of us practicing, the move to electronic medical records has lengthened our days, increased our non-patient care related work and decreased the accuracy of our communications. Medicine involves grueling training (and should in order to be good at it…) and requires years more schooling than many careers. Medicine in most cases involves dealing on a day to day basis with people in crisis and often putting off your own and your family’s crises (not to mention basic things like marriage, kids, grocery store trips, oil changes, doctor visits, PTA meetings, you get my point) in order to be a “good doctor” or, now a days, in order to “meet your benchmark standards” of this or that. Medicine pays well compared to starting jobs out of trade school or a bachelor’s degree in most fields, but if you do the calculations of loans, years of training, hours worked and take into account that the average salary (not starting) for a primary care doctor (Family Practice, Peds, Internal Medicine, etc) is somewhere between $120–200K and the “big earning” fields require years more training and are very competitive, have in general awful hours once in the field and higher stress, its never been something to go into as a safe, lucrative career. Physicians have high rates of divorce, suicide, substance abuse and other health issues. The medical system still works best for a married, usually but not exclusively, male, person with a partner who takes care of everything BUT work for them. One trend now is for more and more physicians (women and men also) to work part time - usually 30–40 hours a week, if you include all the hours worked at home on continuing education, patient follow up, etc. in our cases - and thus take longer to pay off loans, due to salaries 70–100K, and try to have some work/life balance. This leads to more stress at work with trying to still manage patients and provide the care we are trained and wish to provide, but MAYBE it will lead in time to less divorce, suicide, substance abuse, etc… All that is one side of the story. I strongly feel if someone is thinking about medicine as one of the handful of careers they may consider, esp if financial gain is a motivator, then think hard about the other choices. You only live once and if you don’t love patient care or research based medicine or teaching medicine enough to deal with all the stuff I just laid out and still be happy when with your patient, lab, or students then medicine is NOT for you. I have one teenager going into classical music. He’s good, but he’s known for years that this had to be his passion and a thing he couldn’t see himself EVER not doing in order to be happy in the competitive, financially unstable world he’s joining. He thought about other paths and worked hard in high school to explore science and math but music always won. He knows what he’s in for but it makes him feel alive. My middle kid is looking at medicine. She lights up when studying anatomy and biochem. She is a people person and loves fast paced things, being on her feet, thrives when ridiculously busy, loves variety and has a big heart. She also worries about how stressful it is and how the work put in doesn’t equate with any time to relax, take regular vacations or even have a nice house for all physicians (although she also knows its stable and with hard work a very comfortable life compared to many). It will be interesting to see what she decides. I do know that medicine was a fantastic career and passion of mine through all my training and the first 10 years of practice. And its been a solid middle class income as an unexpectedly single mom raising 3 and doing something I at least enjoyed and felt was worth while the second 10 years. I had no problem paying down $140K loans by working in a rural area with loan forgiveness, but I did make the choice to give up a fellowship and return to general Peds in order to start a family and pay off those loans. Its all about choices. Medicine does give you many choices but you had better love what you are studying in med school, (you don’t have to love pre-med - you never need the calc or physics…) and love in depth problem solving, love learning and studying for the rest of your life and you should really like people in all their great and terrible times. Source
