The decision to pursue medicine is not one to be taken lightly. It’s a long, arduous
path, not only with tremendous financial cost, but also sacrifices to work-life balance,
opportunity cost, and countless other compromises. Do you ever wonder if maybe the field of medicine
is overhyped? Let’s set the record straight.
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.
We all have biases, and I like to think I do a good job of being aware and mindful of
my own. As a physician myself who was specializing in reconstructive plastic surgery, who then
changed gears and now builds medical technology and medical education companies, I obviously
have biases. So I’ll start with this to quell some of those concerns: yes, becoming
a doctor is, in fact, overhyped, and I believe that a large number of people pursue medicine
for the wrong reasons. But I also think that becoming a doctor can be a tremendously rewarding
and gratifying experience.
If you’ve ever asked someone what they think of becoming a physician, chances are they
had a highly polarized response. On one hand, if you asked your parents, for example, they
may have gushed about how it’s the most important thing for you to do to be successful
and be deemed worthy in their eyes. But if you asked a physician in the middle of his
or her residency, they likely told you to run as far away as possible.
Then you have the armchair experts who aren’t even close to having any expertise. These
are self-proclaimed career experts, bloggers, or YouTube gurus who never went to medical
school, know nothing about what it’s like to be a doctor, but somehow feel qualified
to tell you about the true, secret, unfiltered and uncut reality of medicine. They’re incentivized
to be polarizing to garner more clicks, but as I like to say, the truth to most things
is somewhere in the middle. The only reason you should listen to these people is to learn
what snake-oil salesmen look like and how to avoid falling for their tricks.
I’d argue that becoming a physician is overhyped for the simple reason that the expectations
and popular stereotypes of doctors aren’t all that accurate. The sexy allure of calling
yourself a doctor often leads to a large number of students entering the field for the wrong
reasons.
Will you earn status and respect for all the hard work you put in to become a physician?
Absolutely. While PA’s, nurses, and other healthcare professionals all work hard, none
of these paths come close to the rigor of doing 4 years of medical school plus 3-7 years
of residency. You’ve definitely deserved the status and respect that comes with being
a physician. If you’re a nurse, physician assistant, or other healthcare worker, I’m
not downplaying the hard work you have put in, or the value you provide to the healthcare
team, which is tremendous. I am, however, pointing to the fact that becoming a physician
is a far more rigorous training process. That’s why physicians have the greatest responsibility
and provide oversight in the healthcare team.
But don’t expect the status and respect to actually mean much. In your day to day
life, it won’t contribute to any meaningful difference in your happiness. Sure, you’ll
have some patients express extreme gratitude, but don’t be surprised when you come across
entitled or even disrespectful patients. Being a physician doesn’t make you immune to being
treated poorly by patients, hospital administrators, and sometimes even your senior colleagues.
Plus, the popular narrative in the media is that physicians are greedy and make too much
money and that we’re to blame for the ballooning costs of healthcare. Spoiler alert: physician
salaries are not the reason for the exorbitant costs of healthcare, but rather rapidly growing
administrative costs, pharmaceutical and equipment costs, and the mess that is health insurance.
When it comes to the salary physicians pull in, let’s be real — it’s one of few
the professions that can safely guarantee a mid six figure income. Can you make more
as a CEO or startup founder? Of course, but the chances of you actually becoming CEO of
a megacorp or a successful startup founder are infinitely smaller. As a physician, if
you work hard and follow the path laid ahead of you, you’ll be making $200,000 to $800,000
per year on average, depending on your specialty. Primary care will be closer to $200k, and
surgical subspecialties like neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, and plastic surgery will
be on the higher end.
But this doesn’t come without significant cost, notably opportunity cost. While most
of your college friends will graduate and start working with a meaningful salary, you’ll
be doing 4 years of medical school and taking out loans. That means while their net worth
increases, yours decreases. Then you’ll do 3-7 years of residency where you’ll only
be making around $55,000 per year. The average medical school graduate has $190,000 in student
loans. So while you make a much larger salary by the time you’re in your 30’s, you’ll
be starting off far behind your peers who have been working and saving for the last
10 years.
As I’ve outlined in a previous analysis, it won’t be until your 40’s that you catch
up to your engineering colleagues. There’s good and bad to the situation. The good news
is that in your late 30’s and onward, you’ll be very comfortable financially. The bad news
is that your 20’s and early 30’s you’ll feel quite strapped for cash. Can you say
“delayed gratification”?
Be mindful that sensationalists have tried to argue that the salaries are far worse than
the averages suggest because of malpractice insurance. Understand that the majority of
physicians, who work for larger practices, groups, and medical centers, have malpractice
insurance already included. It’s the private practice physicians who would pay for their
own malpractice out of pocket, but they also generally pull in much higher average incomes
than their salaried colleagues.
When it comes to career satisfaction, the
data doesn’t lie — if you want to be selfish and maximize your own happiness, you should
help others. The issue I’ve noticed is that too many premeds point to their desire in
helping others as a primary driver in drawing them to the field of medicine. They usually
also add that they like math and science, particularly biology.
That’s fine, but understand if you enjoy science and want to help people, you could
also pursue just about any other career in healthcare, like nurse practitioner, nurse,
physician assistant, CRNA, respiratory therapist, and several others. Those paths come with
far less debt, far less responsibility and stress, and far less time in school or in
training.
Why Being a Doctor is Awesome But that obviously doesn’t paint the whole
picture. If being a NP, PA, or CRNA was better than being a physician, there would be a mass
exodus of students from premed to other healthcare tracks. It’s not that being a doctor is
better than being a midlevel provider — it’s just different and what is best for you will
be highly dependent on your own individual personality, desires, and priorities.
If you’re highly curious, intellectual,
and love problem solving and critical thinking, being a doctor will satisfy that need and
then some. Innovating in the operating room as a surgeon, working up an obscure and challenging
medical case, or even conducting research to further improve medical care are uniquely
rewarding aspects of being a physician.
This does come with added responsibility, however, as you’ll be the one whose butt
is on the line if something in the workup or treatment goes wrong. For most of us, that’s
not a big issue, and it’s a small price to pay for the added reward and fulfillment
you experience when things go well. When you take ownership of treating a patient and are
the one actually calling the shots, you’re putting in a larger investment. The downside
is that when things go south, and sometimes they do in medicine as we cannot cure everything,
the lows can be more challenging too.
As a midlevel, like a PA, you’ll be able to switch specialties, but you’re essentially
forever working at the level of a resident. If you’re ok with that, more power to you.
I would personally rather stick to one specialty and go deep, rather than be only surface level
on multiple different specialties. As a PA in the operating room, that means you’re
only ever primary assist, helping retract or suture at the end of the case, but never
doing the actual surgery. If you’re in the clinic or in a hospital setting, you’ll
always be working under a physician and needing approval on your work. This is highly dependent
on one’s personality, and those who appreciate the fulfillment of being a physician are generally
not the types who would enjoy the restrictions on practicing as a midlevel.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Don’t go into medicine for the money. At
the same time, the high earning potential, while it shouldn’t be a primary driver,
is certainly a strong perk working in its favor. The 2010 study by Kahneman and Deaton
is often misquoted as definitive proof that any income beyond $75,000 doesn’t improve
your level of happiness. If only that were true.
I made a video exploring the scientific literature about wealth and happiness. In short, yes,
higher incomes, and more specifically multi-million dollar net worths are associated with statistically
significant improvements in lifetime happiness and satisfaction, particularly when they are
earned rather than inherited or acquired through windfall.
Beyond practicing clinical medicine as a physician, there are countless other opportunities for
MD’s and DO’s. These days, there are ever increasing numbers of doctors with side hustles.
Just because I quit plastic surgery residency to focus on my multiple businesses doesn’t
mean you have to. It just depends on your specialty and what your outside interests
are.
For example, if you choose a specialty with more predictable hours or a better work-life
balance, it’s not only possible but actually quite common to have other professional pursuits.
That’s why you see so many emergency medicine physicians and anesthesiologists with blogs,
real estate businesses, or other income generating hobbies in addition to their clinical practice.
You can also get involved in basic or clinical scientific research, hospital administration,
public health, public policy, consulting, and much more.
Being a doctor is overrated because of the public perception inaccuracies of what it
means to be a physician — not because it isn’t an awesome profession.
That being said, there are some substantial downsides to wary of. Namely, the rigor of
premed, medical school, and residency is unlike anything else. And second, the financial costs
are substantial to say the least.
The good news is that you can cap the downside and maximize the upside. Who says you can’t
have your cake and eat it too? Premed, medical school, and residency become far easier and
more approachable when you learn to study effectively, efficiently, and master time
management. It’s not just about studying hard, but studying smart. You don’t have
to be burned out and miserable. By implementing the study strategies that I provide here on
YouTube and on our blog, you can learn how to become far more effective as a student,
meaning less time studying, better grades, and more free time to hang out with friends
and lead a balanced life.
The financial concerns are not unfounded either. I paid for my own college and my own medical
school, but the good news is that I was able to take minimal loans because I became a stellar
student. I wasn’t born the smartest, or the most gifted, or from a privileged background.
But I intentionally honed my strategies, studied the system, and ruthlessly experimented, implemented,
and optimized my own systems to get a 99.9th percentile MCAT score, near perfect GPA, and
multiple publications. By the time I applied to medical school, top programs were fighting
over me, and I was able to earn a merit-based scholarship covering my full tuition and most
of my living expenses to my #1 choice. Who says you can’t learn to do the same?
If you want to learn how to be a top student to cap the downside and maximize the upside,
we have a team of over 100 top physicians at Med School Insiders who are on standby,
ready to help you achieve your dreams. Our customers love us, and it’s no surprise
why — we deliver results. Visit us on MedSchoolInsiders.com to learn why we’re the fastest growing company
in the space with industry leading satisfaction ratings.
What do you think — is being a doctor overhyped? I’d love to hear your take in the comments
down below. Thank you all so much for watching. Much love to you all, and I will see you guys
in that next one.