This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Brence Sell, M.D. Medical School, Emory University (1981) It requires hard work to get in and to do well in Med School. Tremendously more work than is required in other fields, and for much longer. The laziest person in my Med School class would have been considered a workaholic in almost any other field. After you finish training you continue to work long hours. I’m 63 and still averaging 65 hours per week. All the while, regulations and the bureaucracy of medicine impose more and more onerous requirements. There is a substantial risk of being sued. And the lawsuits are simply based on bad outcomes. Even if you do everything right as a physician, if a patient has anything less than a perfect outcome you may be sued. And the legal system is horrible - an independent evaluation of legal outcomes found that the courts were wrong in 70–80% of their judgements. And they have years to go over the case and decide what should have been done. The Doctor has to make the decisions in minutes. In addition, there are now “mid level providers” who want to practice medicine independently. They aren’t as smart as Docs; they have much, much less training (like 5–10%); and they are claiming that they are just as good as Docs (they aren’t even close). But they’re going to legislators and convincing them to allow them more and more independence. It will take many years for the disastrous results to become apparent. The “mid level providers” - Nurse Practitioners, Nurse anesthetists, midwives, and PA’s are even getting PhD’s so they can falsely claim they’re doctors. The PhD programs are mostly a joke. Online or onsite they are a sham and mostly consist of instruction in how to talk to administrators and legislators. In addition, large companies are now taking over the practice of medicine. There are complex reasons, but it’s virtually impossible to run a small medical practice now. And small is anything less than hundreds of physicians. So Doctors are more and more commonly employed by large companies….. more people telling you what to do; what boxes to check. Things that make no difference in patient outcomes. More than half of all physicians in the US are now employed by large companies. It’s a little disconcerting to answer to a “boss” that has less than 25% of your education. In the end, the practice of medicine is still rewarding. I would do it again. But you didn’t ask that question. You asked why the “best and brightest” are going into other fields. They’re not stupid. Source
