Is medicine a good choice?

[Runninghat]

It seems the bright kids at schools drift to medicine as my dd is being steered towards and has an interest in. But doctor friends are so negative about the career at the moment saying they wish they had chosen a different path if they had really realised what a life commitment to stress and studying it was. I would love to hear others views as there is no arguing with an idealistic teen.

mumsneedwine No, not in the US, but have been reading a lot about the conditions, pay, application numbers and other stuff in both countries. It does seem that you can access quality of life rewards quicker in other professions. Medicine relies on its vocational aspect to suppress compensation. Also, women don't tend to push for higher salaries, unfortunately, so any profession that has more women entering may not be as highly compensated. I tend to agree with people saying that, on balance, medicine is badly compensated for the level of skill and expertise. That's why many leave, I suppose.

Exactly @Crackedpepper1
I felt a little sad when a surgeon said they are happy with their £120K salary working approx 40 hrs a week when I know other professionals with the same years of work would do a lot less for a whole load more monetary reward. But comparison is the thief of joy so if you are content with your lot, that's what matters

I am 46 so bang in the middle of my career (25-67). It was tough 25-29 but then I had a baby maternity benefits are great in the NHS, worked part-time (which was straightforward and uncontested) for 8 years with another maternity leave mixed in. Childcare was onsite and paid before tax in some trusts. I have been a consultant for nearly 7 years. If I hadn't been a doctor I think I would have taught or perhaps stayed in academia so never going to make really big bucks.

I am happy with my lot in life.

My DD was initially pushed towards medicine and bucked against it, going for far less glamorous maths instead. She's now working in an epidemiological type academic role in a prestigious institution and earning g good money. She loves it and is mighty pleased she stuck to her guns.
And yet.... literally every doctor friend of ours, and family members, have at least one child studying medicine. So it can't be that bad can it?

I have no experience of DC being pushed into Medicine by their parents or schools. My DS has always had a weird Maths talent and if anything his school was assuming he would go for Oxbridge Maths before he set them straight that he was only interested in Medicine. His Maths teacher's disappointed response was "Oh really, I never had you down as a doctor." However I have witnessed DC being "nudged" towards high earning Investment Banking/Corporate Finance/Consultancy careers by parents seeing £££ futures. I find that sad. That type of career is tough enough if you are driven to do it yourself, unthinkable if it is someone else's ambition behind it. Same as Medicine really.

@opoponax loads of great things you can do with maths. I am so pleased DD swerved the usual
Maths route is going into finance and dig out a more Interesting niche by moving on to a sideways move Masters. It's a great degree

I agree that maths is a great degree for the right person @intwrferingma. It sounds like your DD has carved a career that really suits her. Finance can be very interesting for some people too. Just like Medicine is excellent, but only if you yourself really want to be a doctor. That's what it's all about really, finding the right fit for the individual.

Over the years I saw plenty of my peers absolutely thriving in banking and corporate law, despite the high pressure and I see at least one of my DC enjoying it massively now, and plenty of his peers too.

Same intwrferingma: at our school we have had a very high success rate year or year for a very long time with students getting offers for Medicine. It's fair to say that there are a higher than average number of parents in the medical profession and there's a very clear correlation between those and the students who apply for Medicine.

I think it's far more likely that MN skews the reality of how gruelling the reality is in the same way that the applicant threads are way more emotional than anything I've ever seen in well over a decade of medical applications from school. MN frequently fails to mirror real life.

Yet another typo: year on year not year or year.

@goodbyestranger

MN I don't think that referring to the Ockenden report should break your guidelines....

Also Flapjack please remember that patients are human too and when they experience a traumatic event - such as I have done, more than once unfortunately - then please don't shout down their perspective, borne from that experience (and general experience as well).

You accused me of being negligently responsible for a patient's death and of covering it up, on the basis of no knowledge of the case whatsoever. You asserted that, because a death happened out of the blue, I must have been negligent.

You literally accused me of killing a child, And now you're getting huffy that I have "shut down your perspective", Do me a favour.

FancyAFlapjack that's a massive exaggeration and distortion of what I said. As far as I recall you wrote a post which used the drama of gore (severed arms etc) to, in effect, make the case for doctors having to do a job which was inherently more stressful that anyone else's.

You use of the phrase out of the blue was one which jarred, for the reasons already rather tediously explained. There was no mention in your post that you were the lead medic in the case and therefore no accusation whatsoever by me. My comments weren't related to a named individual. I'm not even clear what your job or role is, but I suppose one can now assume that you're a doctor working in a hospital. This is incredibly puerile.

*Your use

I hadn't read the whole thread when I posted initially but I do see now have skim read that you said you were a doctor early on.

Incidentally there's clearly a difference between killing a child and not being able to save a child, but I'm not clear from your posts that even glaring distinctions like that are your forte.

I do tend to do typos a lot but in fact I said don't shout down, not don't shut down. In this case that was actually accurately spelt.

*having skim read

I think I'll get on with the other thing I'm meant to be doing rather than take up an entire thread typing idly on MN while distracted and filling it up with staccato posts and endless corrections....

I think we can take from your posts that you find your own job incredibly stressful and that no other professions experience equivalent stress.

I really hope that some of those who posted about doctors and mistakes and stress etc etc have read the news reports/ updates about Shrewsbury in the past couple of days. Doctors shouldn't be put on a unique pedestal nor should they be exempt from the same accountability as other professions. They are not a special case.

And perhaps the MN threads about medical applications could dial down the emotion a bit to reflect the fact that doctors shouldn't be any more pumped up about how special they are than all other professions.

(Although of course there's no reason why any professional person should be regarded as particularly special).