Health and Medicine Careers

Little Bonnie Band-Aid wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. Yeah, she wanted to fix people’s boo-boos and save lives and all that good stuff, but mostly she wanted the money. She’d watched reruns of House; she knew how those people lived. She wanted the sprawling estate, the Maserati, the timeshare in Montego Bay. She wanted doctor money.

Unfortunately, she didn’t also count on the…doctor debt. In recent years (thanks to questionable law changes and shady insurance industry practices), the average doctor’s take-home pay has dropped from around 450k to 250k. A quarter of a million may not sound like a bad chunk of change, but when you consider the fact that doctors aren’t earning money until they’re 30 or older, will have accumulated massive amounts of student loan debt and are doing things like…oh, operating on brains and hearts and whatnot…it simply isn’t enough.

After four years of undergrad, four years of med school and six years of residency, Bonnie finds herself $300k in the hole, with interest accumulating on those student loans every day. She’s making okay money now, but…not what she originally had in mind. It will be decades before she’ll even be in the black…at which point she’ll probably be too old for that Maserati. She doesn’t want anyone to accuse her of buying a midlife crisis car.

Some doctors—especially experienced and talented surgeons—can definitely make bank (see: www.beverlyhillsboobjobs.com) But most general physicians and other specialists spend half their lives trying just to get back to even. Today, the real money is being made by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, so if you’re motivated by the green, that’s the way to go. On the other hand, if you’re hesitant to make a living by screwing everyone over in the name of the almighty dollar, and would rather actually…help people…then by all means, become a doctor.

But you’d better not be one of those people who wakes up at 11:30 on a Saturday to hear their mother screaming at them to get out of bed, and then says, “Just five more minutes.” Enjoy the sleep you’re getting now, because you’ll have roughly the sleep schedule of a new mother for the next forty to fifty years of your life. Being a doctor is hard work, and a lot of it. Many doctors are on call practically 24/7 (and some of them are on call literally 24/7), so your life isn’t entirely your own. Although, with those massive student loan payments you owe, your life isn’t really your own anyway.

But, as long as your heart is in the right place (on the left side of your chest, but you’ll learn that in medical school), there is no more decent and noble pursuit than that of healing your fellow man.

Depending on what branch of medicine you go into, you may be helping kids cure their coughs, tending to cancer patients, yanking out newborns, or even putting down animals.
There’s a pretty wide range. But whatever the specifics, you have devoted your life to minimizing the pain and misery of others, and renewing hope and vigor where there formerly was none, and for that we give you a standing ovation. We just can’t stand for too long, because this gout is killing us.

Careers In This Field