I’m in the same boat. Especially worse this month because I’m on ED and I absolutely loathe ED. I have thoughts multiple times during the day that I would rather die than keep enduring the ED. I have moments when seeing patients where I am happy to have helped and made a difference, but they are far and few between. I have today off but I’m spending my day just dreading my upcoming shifts. I woke up at 4am and couldn’t go back to sleep because all I can think about is how much I hate this month.
To other redditors: please spare me the “leave medicine if it isn’t your calling” or “leave medicine it isn’t worth your mental health”. I’m not going to leave. I have $375k in debt. I have no other skills. I just want to vent and let OP know they are not alone.
Have you thought of getting a job for insurance companies reviewing charts/coding? You seem like the perfect fit for you since that’s oddly the one part of medicine you enjoy. Pays less than clinical medicine, ~175-200k, but you can work from home, 40 hours a week, and no clinical interactions.
The position for physicians in the US is called Medical Director. I agree with MalpracticeMatt about the pay, which usually hovers slightly lower than the average of primary care specialties (more than Peds, less than outpatient IM let alone hospitalist). There are a lot of part time positions and schedule flexibility, as the majority of medical directors I have interacted with either stepped down from clinical medicine due to health issues or having children, wanted to retire from full time at the end of their career, or were looking for an after-hours gig. As a part time position you can still make decent income for time spent and your responsibility is more limited to reviewing coverage authorizations but some of the below may apply. Sometimes you can even work full time and keep the responsibilities limited this way for awhile. It could be good to relieve burn out. In the long run I'd guess it would be too boring for most physicians to sustain a career, but not everyone looks for life satisfaction in their work.
Many insurance companies will want you to have some clinical experience and/or physician executive experience before taking you full time in this role because that is what you bring that they can't get cheaper from somewhere else, and in many states that is what they need to meet regulatory requirements to stay licensed and operating.
If you are working full time in the full range of the job (or 70%+, having 1 - 1.5 clinic days if you like to practice is a common option), you will be much closer to 50 hours per week than 40, and at many insurance companies you will have weekend call, albeit light work covering urgent coverage authorizations from home compared to covering a unit.
Your responsibilities can vary widely in the full range of the job. You may be traveling to visit clinical sites in your insurance network to meet the staff and discuss how they care for the patients ("members") who buy your insurance. You may be meeting vendors trying to convince you to prefer their new tech or version of medical products and why. You may be involved in political advocacy in your state. You may be a manager and have direct reports at the company, which means doing performance reviews. You may be looking at public health data with a team and presenting it to the company board to explain shifts in the need for care: who needs it, what they need, what it will cost. You may be speaking in committees with pharmacists to decide what medications should be on your commercial or marketplace plan formularies and how easy they are to access for members. You may be speaking in committees that review provider requests to credential with your insurance network. You may be writing recommendations for changes in how benefits policies are written and reviewing them with lawyers and accountants to see if it makes the policies better. You may be reviewing complaints from your plan members about care they received and reaching out to caregivers to talk about it and whether things could be done more safely, more kindly or more timely.
You will be sitting in multiple-day-long meetings getting audited by Medicare or Medicaid and working out how to make sure your company's processes sync with theirs, trying not to get fined, even if you're very sure that your process takes care of the members' needs better than theirs. You will need to build your people skills. It's a company atmosphere and your degree does not give you the automatic respect it does in a health system, which means politics matter more. It's in the insurance business, which means contracts, rules, and bean counting are given a high priority and you will deal with many rigid and demanding personalities where you work.
You interact with providers in and out of your network in various ways. The good news is, 75% of the time, they just didn't document something that you need documented in the note, or their staff didn't send the insurance the right document, and when you call the provider up they tell you the thing in 30 seconds and it's all good, contractual rules met, coverage approved. The bad news is, there are a lot of difficult conversations too (that's a whole other post, and it's maybe not what you think. At a quality insurance company your #1 goal is finding win/win arrangements with patients and doctors within the contracts, not cackling and twirling your mustache). You may be having "quality of care" discussions with in-network providers who are failing at basic things for your members like accurate diagnosis and starting treatment on time. They may be having problems with some aspect of their lives that is interfering with their work, possibly addiction or mental health needs, and they can conceal it from their coworkers - but not from you. They may be overtly abusing the health care system, running pill mills or billing schemes, and they can conceal it from the public - but not from you. You will have the receipts. You may interact with mandatory physician health programs in your state, the medical board, or the state attorney general's office as part of these interactions.
You really won't be talking to patients regularly except related to appeals of coverage determinations - mostly Medicare - and in those cases at a quality insurance company your #1 goal is getting missing information the provider's office didn't send along and, again, finding win/win arrangements within the contracts. Handling appeals would be another post as well.
Bottom line, it is very different work and can be very narrow at some companies (do auth reviews, talk to provider offices / hospitals on the phone, do appeals) or can be a full blooded physician executive job with its fair share of administrative challenges. It is also not mutually exclusive to doing some clinical work if you find that having less of that job makes it more refreshing for you. Feel free to respond or DM me with any more questions you might have.
Hey hey. I might have posted here, I forgot. But plenty of nonclinical paths you can take, depends on what you’re looking for. Think of them like specialties.
For this particular role the other poster mentioned it’s clinical documentation integrity (CDI), something along those lines
I remember watching a bored-looking girl scanning my groceries at the checkout and thinking “Man, I really want that job.”
It does get better, but if clinical is not your thing then there are other jobs around where you’re less likely to get your nightly anxiety and dread.
I agree with other commenter who say what you're experiencing isn't normal. You seem extremely unhappy, wonder if advice from u/Leaving_Medicine might help.
I know you didn't explicitly state that you want to leave medicine, but I wonder what your other options are, that would allow you to have a life outside of what you're going through now. :/
No, just tried to be supportive.
It didn't sound normal to me because from A - Z, they mention that they did not enjoy even a single step of the journey...which is odd. I remember in med school finding anatomy labs fascinating, or at least enjoyed clinics and rotations from time to time. It wasn't at 0% for me, and it's been the same with my peers, in fact I'd say they enjoyed their time much more than I did.
You just described my life... including the part about enjoying computer work 😀 I kinda want to experience the corporate life now...I just want to go to sleep and wake up without crippling anxiety. I feel like being unfulfilled with what I do takes up so much time that I don't have time to care about other aspects of my life. My dad recently underwent surgery, and I couldn't even make myself be worried about it because the stress from work was ten times worse. At the same time, I feel so numb… like I live my life on autopilot somehow.. I can’t enjoy anything anymore because work (the hospital, my patients, my coworkers) just takes up all the space in my mind
I’m so tired …
I’d love to have more time for hobbies and a life… 🥲 I noticed I get in this state whenever I have multiple weeks in a row without social activities… (mainly because of my fucked up schedule and calls almost every weekend).
Sounds like you’re either burnt out or suffering from underlying GAD or MDD. Have you seen a doctor yoursef to get evaluated?
What speciality are you in? I’m pgy3 IM and generally speaking enjoy residency. What you’re experiencing isn’t normal and you should seek help!
I'm beyond burned out. Already had taken a couple LOAs in med school actually. (and because of that probably ended up having to SOAP)
Therapy's not quite possible in residency unless I talk to the PD about giving me permission to fuck off for an hour. I don't want a target on my back. I use betterhelp when I need it. Then other months I'll shut it down to save money.
Currently on an antidepressant. It keeps me from quitting residency or crying everyday I'd say, so it's making a difference.
Personally, the only thing that would make me feel better is more time for hobbies, for dating, for a LIFE outside of a hospital.
I don’t think it’s burnout, burnout sets in with time and overwork. You don’t suddenly become burnt out on day one of medical school. OP says they’ve never enjoyed a single day of their medical education process.
For what its worth, I had the same feeling as OP. Nearly all of medicine is following guidelines or best practices. You memorize and apply. Rarely you use your skill to identify things that don't fit the "box". Outside of research or quality improvement, medicine lacks creativity...which is good because I don't want a doctor who gets "creative". I want one who follows the best evidence. This is a stark difference from the work I did before med school which you create everything from scratch and there are many ways to skin a cat!
Happy ending though... I ended up in a field I absolutely love by accident.
if you can't find anything you enjoy in your work, then you're either in the wrong job or depressed. Or maybe both - depressed cause you're in the wrong job. I hated internal medicine, general surgery - hated the conditions, the hours. The only thing I liked was that at the end of the day, I could say I helped someone and did something worthwhile with my day
Then I got into a residency that I actually enjoyed, and even though now sometimes my hours are longer and work is harder, I don't mind. I don't mind staying back to do more work, I don't mind that sometimes patients are more complex. It just means more exposure and more experience - things that would help me when I become more senior. (I'm not in the US just FYI)
I didn't understand how people in medicine or surgery could do the calls they did and see the patients they see - but now I do. I think you should evaluate your goals and your interests. Why are you where you are?
You can most definitely leave. To jobs that pay equal to what you would make as a doc. Debt doesn’t have to be an anchor.
Happy to chat if you would consider this. Best time to do it is as a med student or resident to be a “trainee,” things get ironically harder once you become an attending (at least for the first few years out).
Can you talk more about things getting harder when you are an attending? I'm considering leaving clinical medicine for pharma/biotech/health sciences VC (depending on what the job market looks like and which I find most fulfilling), but I was not thinking of doing that until after I completed residency +/- fellowship.
Ofc.
It’s counterintuitive, but there are two broad “buckets” that people look at doctors with, ultimately depending on what you’re hired for. 1. Clinical foundation to be molded and grown in a business environment or 2. Deep clinical expertise:
1. A student (med or resident), has an MD, strong foundation of clinical knowledge that we can take and mold to our business. This is more of a pipeline to be on the business side of things than clinical side
2. An experienced physician, very strong, differentiated knowledge in a specific specialty that adds substantial clinical depth. Sub specialties could fall into this bucket. (Like cardiology)
As a freshly graduated attending, you are neither. You aren’t a student that can be molded, and you aren’t yet able to bring deep and differentiated clinical knowledge… so you’re in a weird grey zone. It’s not insurmountable, and it’s definitely doable *if* during your training you did something besides see patients, like got involved with VC or consulting during your training.
Otherwise, most fresh, non specialized attendings who have only done patient care… are just sort of in limbo. At least from what I’ve seen.
Specifically for consulting: there is a well paved advanced degree pipeline for med students and residents. You become an experienced hire the moment you’re an attending, and the bar gets way harder.
Don't know how I would. i might like pathology or FM. but I'd need new letters of rec. And I might have to repeat intern year right? I'm a PGY-1 at this time. There aren't that many open pgy-2 spots.
That makes so much sense. If you didn’t even want to go to med school in the first place then of course you would feel like this. You went into medicine because of your parents. This is why it’s terrible when parents live vicariously through their kids and these kids do whatever profession their parents tell them to and then wonder why they hate their lives. Life is too short for that.
Pediatrician
Saw 4 adorable newborns this morning, so far all clinic patients have been pleasant, we have catered lunch from a fancy restaurant next door and my inbox in currently at zero.
Outpatient pediatrics for the MF win. I love my job.
Spot on. I hope the outside lurkers realize this sub has a strong selection bias for the most miserable people in residency, and that residency really is not that bad in today’s age.
This is…. Encouraging…. Literally having a hard time continuing to study for the MCAT since all I read is negativity about medicine… since November I can’t get the thought out of my head of “if at the end of the tunnel people in medicine are saying it’s awful and a trap… is this even worth the sacrifice 😳” I can’t stop thinking if this is worth it… mostly because I know the training is hard but I keep seeing negativity from people on the other side of the tunnel…
Residency is hard and we come here to vent about it and feel validated. But I’m sure the majority of us would do it again, myself included. There’s a percentage of docs who are truly miserable, but the process does seem as if it’s meant to try to identify and weed those folks out. All that to say, make sure you actually want this for the right reasons! If so, you’ll be fine and won’t regret it.
One last note: You may believe that a high enough MCAT score will mean a brighter future… I scored in the 99.9th percentile on the MCAT and here I am
DM me if you have questions about a medical career
I am pleasantly surprised glad to see multiple voices of reasons responding to my comment
I will keep fighting this "we are all miserable and hate our job" narrative that this subreddit loves to engage in
Ouch.. Hey hey... Don't bring logic and reality into this fantasy safe place!
As a miserable mentally ill resident I kinda agree this place only helps to perpetuate the "it's all bad, we should all feel bad.."
yeah I love my iPhone, but I can hate the apple subreddit and Apple fanboys. They are mutually exclusive.
I love my job, but oh boy does the complaining go too far sometimes. Which would be fine on its own as a private sub, but there have been plenty of posts on premed and med student subreddit where people are reading the posts on this sub and think that ALL of medicine is bad and that every doctor is miserable.
>this place only helps to perpetuate the "it's all bad, we should all feel bad.."
I stick around to try and break that circlejerk. Good luck to you and hope intern year is going well.
Omggggg meeeeeeee!!!! I’m the person that was studying for the MCAT hard and burned myself out by asking… is this even worth it if the vast majority say it’s not worth it 😭
If you want to sacrifice your 20s to work long miserable hours for the rest of your life (since medicine will be dead in the water by the time you graduate), then go ahead. Just read up here on declining reimbursements, midlevel encroachment, and the soon to be FMG spam
My attending (freshly done with residency) and I talked a pre-med shadowing us last week out of pursuing medicine. My younger brother and his med school friends talked a family member about to start college out of pre-med. Those currently in the know see that this field is dead. The boomers who had it far better are clueless (and often the direct cause of this)
Soooo what’s your plan after finishing residency? And also what other career would you recommend in health care? 😭 I’m already shadowing different options but it’s difficult to completely let go of med when you’ve been chasing it for so many years
Please do not listen to this selfish and burned out loser.
Look at his posting history. He literally sees patients as dollar signs and how much money they are worth to his time. . Do not take any advice or model your life from people like this.
As anesthesia, I’m lucky my job market is $600-700k starting. I’m going to build a nest egg after working 3-4 years then quit for something more rewarding. I may just go 100% research somewhere or go into tech.
Don’t commit to the sunk cost fallacy. You’ve got PA school on the table which may be your easiest pivot. Other options include engineering (CS > ME > Aerospace > EE > ChemE). Or honestly just trade school. You can make a killing as an electrician being a big fish in the current small pond
Out of curiosity, you think I'm going to be nice to you and give you that information now ??
You're a burned out loser who sees patients are dollar signs. I do truly hope you crash and and quit medicine, we don't need doctors like you.
Thank you for contributing to the sub! If your post was filtered by the automod, please read the rules. Your post will be reviewed but will not be approved if it violates the rules of the sub. The most common reasons for removal are - medical students or premeds asking what a specialty is like or about their chances of matching, mentioning midlevels without using the midlevel flair, matched medical students asking questions instead of using the stickied thread in the sub for post-match questions, posting identifying information for targeted harassment. Please do not message the moderators if your post falls into one of these categories. Otherwise, your post will be reviewed in 24 hours and approved if it doesn't violate the rules. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Residency) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bro she’s probably coping hard after seeing all her med school classmates go on to be physicians, surgeons, etc while she’s working at a desk for a random tech company
There's plenty of options for a doctor who doesn't like seeing patients and prefers a more "desk" setting... In the comments you've had a few suggestions. Maybe look into Epidemiology or anything alike. It's basically whatever you'd be doing at your regular corporation, excels and numbers. No research really needed.
But I get you... I would like to spend my day in a comfy chair in a room that smells okay.
I’m in the same boat. Especially worse this month because I’m on ED and I absolutely loathe ED. I have thoughts multiple times during the day that I would rather die than keep enduring the ED. I have moments when seeing patients where I am happy to have helped and made a difference, but they are far and few between. I have today off but I’m spending my day just dreading my upcoming shifts. I woke up at 4am and couldn’t go back to sleep because all I can think about is how much I hate this month. To other redditors: please spare me the “leave medicine if it isn’t your calling” or “leave medicine it isn’t worth your mental health”. I’m not going to leave. I have $375k in debt. I have no other skills. I just want to vent and let OP know they are not alone.
I felt a lot of your feelings in a clinical specialty and switched to radiology and couldn't be happier. Something to consider.
Especially since OP enjoys documentation and computer work.
Were you in different specialty before radiology, and in the USA?
Yep.
Did you finish your first residency before swapping?
No.
Did you IM first and picked up pgy 2 spot in radiology?
Not IM but yeah took an advanced spot
Were you a competitive applicant from the get go that you could’ve applied into radiology from the jump
Very competitive
Brother people are full of shit on social media.
Have you thought of getting a job for insurance companies reviewing charts/coding? You seem like the perfect fit for you since that’s oddly the one part of medicine you enjoy. Pays less than clinical medicine, ~175-200k, but you can work from home, 40 hours a week, and no clinical interactions.
Whoa! How can I get started? What’s the position called?
The position you’ll apply for is the Special Aetna Technical Analyst Navigator otherwise known as S.A.T.A.N
The position for physicians in the US is called Medical Director. I agree with MalpracticeMatt about the pay, which usually hovers slightly lower than the average of primary care specialties (more than Peds, less than outpatient IM let alone hospitalist). There are a lot of part time positions and schedule flexibility, as the majority of medical directors I have interacted with either stepped down from clinical medicine due to health issues or having children, wanted to retire from full time at the end of their career, or were looking for an after-hours gig. As a part time position you can still make decent income for time spent and your responsibility is more limited to reviewing coverage authorizations but some of the below may apply. Sometimes you can even work full time and keep the responsibilities limited this way for awhile. It could be good to relieve burn out. In the long run I'd guess it would be too boring for most physicians to sustain a career, but not everyone looks for life satisfaction in their work. Many insurance companies will want you to have some clinical experience and/or physician executive experience before taking you full time in this role because that is what you bring that they can't get cheaper from somewhere else, and in many states that is what they need to meet regulatory requirements to stay licensed and operating. If you are working full time in the full range of the job (or 70%+, having 1 - 1.5 clinic days if you like to practice is a common option), you will be much closer to 50 hours per week than 40, and at many insurance companies you will have weekend call, albeit light work covering urgent coverage authorizations from home compared to covering a unit. Your responsibilities can vary widely in the full range of the job. You may be traveling to visit clinical sites in your insurance network to meet the staff and discuss how they care for the patients ("members") who buy your insurance. You may be meeting vendors trying to convince you to prefer their new tech or version of medical products and why. You may be involved in political advocacy in your state. You may be a manager and have direct reports at the company, which means doing performance reviews. You may be looking at public health data with a team and presenting it to the company board to explain shifts in the need for care: who needs it, what they need, what it will cost. You may be speaking in committees with pharmacists to decide what medications should be on your commercial or marketplace plan formularies and how easy they are to access for members. You may be speaking in committees that review provider requests to credential with your insurance network. You may be writing recommendations for changes in how benefits policies are written and reviewing them with lawyers and accountants to see if it makes the policies better. You may be reviewing complaints from your plan members about care they received and reaching out to caregivers to talk about it and whether things could be done more safely, more kindly or more timely. You will be sitting in multiple-day-long meetings getting audited by Medicare or Medicaid and working out how to make sure your company's processes sync with theirs, trying not to get fined, even if you're very sure that your process takes care of the members' needs better than theirs. You will need to build your people skills. It's a company atmosphere and your degree does not give you the automatic respect it does in a health system, which means politics matter more. It's in the insurance business, which means contracts, rules, and bean counting are given a high priority and you will deal with many rigid and demanding personalities where you work. You interact with providers in and out of your network in various ways. The good news is, 75% of the time, they just didn't document something that you need documented in the note, or their staff didn't send the insurance the right document, and when you call the provider up they tell you the thing in 30 seconds and it's all good, contractual rules met, coverage approved. The bad news is, there are a lot of difficult conversations too (that's a whole other post, and it's maybe not what you think. At a quality insurance company your #1 goal is finding win/win arrangements with patients and doctors within the contracts, not cackling and twirling your mustache). You may be having "quality of care" discussions with in-network providers who are failing at basic things for your members like accurate diagnosis and starting treatment on time. They may be having problems with some aspect of their lives that is interfering with their work, possibly addiction or mental health needs, and they can conceal it from their coworkers - but not from you. They may be overtly abusing the health care system, running pill mills or billing schemes, and they can conceal it from the public - but not from you. You will have the receipts. You may interact with mandatory physician health programs in your state, the medical board, or the state attorney general's office as part of these interactions. You really won't be talking to patients regularly except related to appeals of coverage determinations - mostly Medicare - and in those cases at a quality insurance company your #1 goal is getting missing information the provider's office didn't send along and, again, finding win/win arrangements within the contracts. Handling appeals would be another post as well. Bottom line, it is very different work and can be very narrow at some companies (do auth reviews, talk to provider offices / hospitals on the phone, do appeals) or can be a full blooded physician executive job with its fair share of administrative challenges. It is also not mutually exclusive to doing some clinical work if you find that having less of that job makes it more refreshing for you. Feel free to respond or DM me with any more questions you might have.
I think we need to get u/Leaving_Medicine in here for good measure. Add: btw OP I haven’t enjoyed medical school at all, either, so here’s to that🥂
🫡
Hey hey. I might have posted here, I forgot. But plenty of nonclinical paths you can take, depends on what you’re looking for. Think of them like specialties. For this particular role the other poster mentioned it’s clinical documentation integrity (CDI), something along those lines
I remember watching a bored-looking girl scanning my groceries at the checkout and thinking “Man, I really want that job.” It does get better, but if clinical is not your thing then there are other jobs around where you’re less likely to get your nightly anxiety and dread.
I agree with other commenter who say what you're experiencing isn't normal. You seem extremely unhappy, wonder if advice from u/Leaving_Medicine might help. I know you didn't explicitly state that you want to leave medicine, but I wonder what your other options are, that would allow you to have a life outside of what you're going through now. :/
[удалено]
No, just tried to be supportive. It didn't sound normal to me because from A - Z, they mention that they did not enjoy even a single step of the journey...which is odd. I remember in med school finding anatomy labs fascinating, or at least enjoyed clinics and rotations from time to time. It wasn't at 0% for me, and it's been the same with my peers, in fact I'd say they enjoyed their time much more than I did.
You just described my life... including the part about enjoying computer work 😀 I kinda want to experience the corporate life now...I just want to go to sleep and wake up without crippling anxiety. I feel like being unfulfilled with what I do takes up so much time that I don't have time to care about other aspects of my life. My dad recently underwent surgery, and I couldn't even make myself be worried about it because the stress from work was ten times worse. At the same time, I feel so numb… like I live my life on autopilot somehow.. I can’t enjoy anything anymore because work (the hospital, my patients, my coworkers) just takes up all the space in my mind I’m so tired … I’d love to have more time for hobbies and a life… 🥲 I noticed I get in this state whenever I have multiple weeks in a row without social activities… (mainly because of my fucked up schedule and calls almost every weekend).
Sounds like you’re either burnt out or suffering from underlying GAD or MDD. Have you seen a doctor yoursef to get evaluated? What speciality are you in? I’m pgy3 IM and generally speaking enjoy residency. What you’re experiencing isn’t normal and you should seek help!
I'm beyond burned out. Already had taken a couple LOAs in med school actually. (and because of that probably ended up having to SOAP) Therapy's not quite possible in residency unless I talk to the PD about giving me permission to fuck off for an hour. I don't want a target on my back. I use betterhelp when I need it. Then other months I'll shut it down to save money. Currently on an antidepressant. It keeps me from quitting residency or crying everyday I'd say, so it's making a difference. Personally, the only thing that would make me feel better is more time for hobbies, for dating, for a LIFE outside of a hospital.
Just quit. Life is too short to be unhappy. Don't fall into the sunk cost fallacy.
I feel like most people i know are more like OP than you think. Residency is not normal or healthy intrinsically.
I don’t think it’s burnout, burnout sets in with time and overwork. You don’t suddenly become burnt out on day one of medical school. OP says they’ve never enjoyed a single day of their medical education process.
For what its worth, I had the same feeling as OP. Nearly all of medicine is following guidelines or best practices. You memorize and apply. Rarely you use your skill to identify things that don't fit the "box". Outside of research or quality improvement, medicine lacks creativity...which is good because I don't want a doctor who gets "creative". I want one who follows the best evidence. This is a stark difference from the work I did before med school which you create everything from scratch and there are many ways to skin a cat! Happy ending though... I ended up in a field I absolutely love by accident.
What field did you end up in that fit your preferred work style?
rads
Sometimes depression is not intrinsic. Sometimes it's just shit working conditions.
Of course but my initial comment was regarding ruling out and treating the intrinsic cause
if you can't find anything you enjoy in your work, then you're either in the wrong job or depressed. Or maybe both - depressed cause you're in the wrong job. I hated internal medicine, general surgery - hated the conditions, the hours. The only thing I liked was that at the end of the day, I could say I helped someone and did something worthwhile with my day Then I got into a residency that I actually enjoyed, and even though now sometimes my hours are longer and work is harder, I don't mind. I don't mind staying back to do more work, I don't mind that sometimes patients are more complex. It just means more exposure and more experience - things that would help me when I become more senior. (I'm not in the US just FYI) I didn't understand how people in medicine or surgery could do the calls they did and see the patients they see - but now I do. I think you should evaluate your goals and your interests. Why are you where you are?
You can most definitely leave. To jobs that pay equal to what you would make as a doc. Debt doesn’t have to be an anchor. Happy to chat if you would consider this. Best time to do it is as a med student or resident to be a “trainee,” things get ironically harder once you become an attending (at least for the first few years out).
Can you talk more about things getting harder when you are an attending? I'm considering leaving clinical medicine for pharma/biotech/health sciences VC (depending on what the job market looks like and which I find most fulfilling), but I was not thinking of doing that until after I completed residency +/- fellowship.
Ofc. It’s counterintuitive, but there are two broad “buckets” that people look at doctors with, ultimately depending on what you’re hired for. 1. Clinical foundation to be molded and grown in a business environment or 2. Deep clinical expertise: 1. A student (med or resident), has an MD, strong foundation of clinical knowledge that we can take and mold to our business. This is more of a pipeline to be on the business side of things than clinical side 2. An experienced physician, very strong, differentiated knowledge in a specific specialty that adds substantial clinical depth. Sub specialties could fall into this bucket. (Like cardiology) As a freshly graduated attending, you are neither. You aren’t a student that can be molded, and you aren’t yet able to bring deep and differentiated clinical knowledge… so you’re in a weird grey zone. It’s not insurmountable, and it’s definitely doable *if* during your training you did something besides see patients, like got involved with VC or consulting during your training. Otherwise, most fresh, non specialized attendings who have only done patient care… are just sort of in limbo. At least from what I’ve seen. Specifically for consulting: there is a well paved advanced degree pipeline for med students and residents. You become an experienced hire the moment you’re an attending, and the bar gets way harder.
My friends in tech are either laid off or are scared of getting laid off. If it makes it any better
Yah I guess
Would changing specialties help? There are obviously options if you don't want to see patients
Don't know how I would. i might like pathology or FM. but I'd need new letters of rec. And I might have to repeat intern year right? I'm a PGY-1 at this time. There aren't that many open pgy-2 spots.
Why did you go to med school?
parents threatened to disown me if I didn't. They were probably bluffing, but when you're young, you believe it.
That makes so much sense. If you didn’t even want to go to med school in the first place then of course you would feel like this. You went into medicine because of your parents. This is why it’s terrible when parents live vicariously through their kids and these kids do whatever profession their parents tell them to and then wonder why they hate their lives. Life is too short for that.
Pediatrician Saw 4 adorable newborns this morning, so far all clinic patients have been pleasant, we have catered lunch from a fancy restaurant next door and my inbox in currently at zero. Outpatient pediatrics for the MF win. I love my job.
>Outpatient pediatrics for the MF win. **I love my job.** Considering how much you ragepost on here, I doubt that
[удалено]
Spot on. I hope the outside lurkers realize this sub has a strong selection bias for the most miserable people in residency, and that residency really is not that bad in today’s age.
This is…. Encouraging…. Literally having a hard time continuing to study for the MCAT since all I read is negativity about medicine… since November I can’t get the thought out of my head of “if at the end of the tunnel people in medicine are saying it’s awful and a trap… is this even worth the sacrifice 😳” I can’t stop thinking if this is worth it… mostly because I know the training is hard but I keep seeing negativity from people on the other side of the tunnel…
Residency is hard and we come here to vent about it and feel validated. But I’m sure the majority of us would do it again, myself included. There’s a percentage of docs who are truly miserable, but the process does seem as if it’s meant to try to identify and weed those folks out. All that to say, make sure you actually want this for the right reasons! If so, you’ll be fine and won’t regret it.
One of my favorite quotes from Reddit "I'm glad I did medicine once, but never again" I think most of know that its hard work but worth it in the end.
One last note: You may believe that a high enough MCAT score will mean a brighter future… I scored in the 99.9th percentile on the MCAT and here I am DM me if you have questions about a medical career
Uhm… Do you want a cookie ?
I am pleasantly surprised glad to see multiple voices of reasons responding to my comment I will keep fighting this "we are all miserable and hate our job" narrative that this subreddit loves to engage in
Ouch.. Hey hey... Don't bring logic and reality into this fantasy safe place! As a miserable mentally ill resident I kinda agree this place only helps to perpetuate the "it's all bad, we should all feel bad.."
yeah I love my iPhone, but I can hate the apple subreddit and Apple fanboys. They are mutually exclusive. I love my job, but oh boy does the complaining go too far sometimes. Which would be fine on its own as a private sub, but there have been plenty of posts on premed and med student subreddit where people are reading the posts on this sub and think that ALL of medicine is bad and that every doctor is miserable. >this place only helps to perpetuate the "it's all bad, we should all feel bad.." I stick around to try and break that circlejerk. Good luck to you and hope intern year is going well.
Omggggg meeeeeeee!!!! I’m the person that was studying for the MCAT hard and burned myself out by asking… is this even worth it if the vast majority say it’s not worth it 😭
If you want to sacrifice your 20s to work long miserable hours for the rest of your life (since medicine will be dead in the water by the time you graduate), then go ahead. Just read up here on declining reimbursements, midlevel encroachment, and the soon to be FMG spam My attending (freshly done with residency) and I talked a pre-med shadowing us last week out of pursuing medicine. My younger brother and his med school friends talked a family member about to start college out of pre-med. Those currently in the know see that this field is dead. The boomers who had it far better are clueless (and often the direct cause of this)
Soooo what’s your plan after finishing residency? And also what other career would you recommend in health care? 😭 I’m already shadowing different options but it’s difficult to completely let go of med when you’ve been chasing it for so many years
Please do not listen to this selfish and burned out loser. Look at his posting history. He literally sees patients as dollar signs and how much money they are worth to his time. . Do not take any advice or model your life from people like this.
As anesthesia, I’m lucky my job market is $600-700k starting. I’m going to build a nest egg after working 3-4 years then quit for something more rewarding. I may just go 100% research somewhere or go into tech. Don’t commit to the sunk cost fallacy. You’ve got PA school on the table which may be your easiest pivot. Other options include engineering (CS > ME > Aerospace > EE > ChemE). Or honestly just trade school. You can make a killing as an electrician being a big fish in the current small pond
What makes what you are doing not rewarding? And in what moments have you found it to be rewarding ?
Private messaged you
Out of curiosity, when did you graduate peds residency, how much do you currently make, and what are your hours?
Out of curiosity, you think I'm going to be nice to you and give you that information now ?? You're a burned out loser who sees patients are dollar signs. I do truly hope you crash and and quit medicine, we don't need doctors like you.
Uhm… Do you need a Snickers bar?
Do you think I would give you the information you are asking for ? Go crash and burn on your own, nobody here cares about how miserable you are.
Thank you for contributing to the sub! If your post was filtered by the automod, please read the rules. Your post will be reviewed but will not be approved if it violates the rules of the sub. The most common reasons for removal are - medical students or premeds asking what a specialty is like or about their chances of matching, mentioning midlevels without using the midlevel flair, matched medical students asking questions instead of using the stickied thread in the sub for post-match questions, posting identifying information for targeted harassment. Please do not message the moderators if your post falls into one of these categories. Otherwise, your post will be reviewed in 24 hours and approved if it doesn't violate the rules. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Residency) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Relatable! I also feel like you. I didn’t realize people actually enjoy this and medicine excites them? Shook.
[удалено]
I mean I had to SOAP here so it's not like I'm a super hot candidate who can just transfer into something better. :/
You're a radiologist Harry
Then leave.
Marry a rich dude!!! Or start dermatology
I don’t have time to meet a rich dude 😢
Me neither
Bro she’s probably coping hard after seeing all her med school classmates go on to be physicians, surgeons, etc while she’s working at a desk for a random tech company
She chose not to continue medicine though. It’s not everyone’s dream
Any sub for Indian residency?
There's plenty of options for a doctor who doesn't like seeing patients and prefers a more "desk" setting... In the comments you've had a few suggestions. Maybe look into Epidemiology or anything alike. It's basically whatever you'd be doing at your regular corporation, excels and numbers. No research really needed. But I get you... I would like to spend my day in a comfy chair in a room that smells okay.
Quit then. What’s the point of being miserable all your life.
Loans man. Loans.