I just wanted to send out my thanks to OPM and all of the posters, and raise the issue of job satisfaction. Medicine has been calling my name for quite some time. I tend to read every post on every forum on the Internet about medicine. Recently, mommd.com has become my obsession. The women physicians who post on that site tend to really resent their jobs and clearly state that they would never make the MD decision twice. The only people with anything positive to say are the pre-meds and med students who haven’t yet tasted true medical practice. It is really sad and unnerving. Reading their posts makes me doubt this expensive, labor intensive sacrifice that I’ve decided to make. But then I read the really positive things on OPM and I become a believer all over again. I must admit to myself that a medical career almost always involves ridiculous hours, even once training is over, and payment for medical services is decreasing with no end in sight. Is job satisfaction for physicians a thing of the past or is there hope? I can’t not pursue this goal because it means so much to me. But it would be nice to know that there is hope for job satisfaction and flexibility as a (female) physician. Any thoughts?
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I just wanted to send out my thanks to OPM and all of the posters, and raise the issue of job satisfaction. Medicine has been calling my name for quite some time. I tend to read every post on every forum on the Internet about medicine. Recently, mommd.com has become my obsession. The women physicians who post on that site tend to really resent their jobs and clearly state that they would never make the MD decision twice. The only people with anything positive to say are the pre-meds and med students who haven’t yet tasted true medical practice. It is really sad and unnerving. Reading their posts makes me doubt this expensive, labor intensive sacrifice that I’ve decided to make. But then I read the really positive things on OPM and I become a believer all over again. I must admit to myself that a medical career almost always involves ridiculous hours, even once training is over, and payment for medical services is decreasing with no end in sight. Is job satisfaction for physicians a thing of the past or is there hope? I can’t not pursue this goal because it means so much to me. But it would be nice to know that there is hope for job satisfaction and flexibility as a (female) physician. Any thoughts?
Hi Ashley,
I think it’s a healthy thing for you to be doubting and questioning your choices. There seems to be a consensus among physicians with 15+ years experience that it’s less fun than it used to be. But it can’t be that it’s totally bad because if it were, all the physicians would quit and become consultants to pharmaceutical companies and so forth.
Perhaps you can incorporate into your career goals the idea that you will be a part of the solution and help fix the problems with the medical system. I believe the system is fixable through malpractice reform, simplification of insurance procedures, computerized patient information, better education and more effective advocacy in state legislatures and Congress.
With this in mind, you can proceed with the confidence that while the system isn’t perfect, you are going to make it better and (hopefully) have fun while doing so. That’s my attitude and I have entertained all sorts of ideas on how I want to practice. No malpractice coverage; simple fee-for-service; 10% of my time donated to free clinics/indigent patients; a percentage of my time in advocacy and teaching; continuing education; etc. etc. It’s fun to contemplate and helps keep me charged up.
Best of luck and keep the faith!
Hi there,
I have been a physician since May 2002 and I love everything about the practice of medicine especially surgery. My job gives me a daily dose of mental and physical challenge which is a blast. I love operating and I love patient care.
Am I going to kid myself and say that this job is easy? No, it’s very, very difficult to do well. It takes years of work to get even the operative skills that I now have. In addition, I still have loads to learn about the intricate care of very sick patients and often critically ill patients.
I am very blessed to be able to do what I truly love to do. I work 80 hours each week and often have to push to get everything done in 80 hours in order to conform with the law. I love the trauma patients, the hernias, and most everything else but most of all, I love doing vascular surgery.
My job is the ultimate problem-solving vocation and I seem to be fairly well suited for this. I am happy to be doing what I love and I will continue to do so. I just cannot understand unhappiness in medicine. Maybe I will become jaded at some point but there hasn’t been a single case that I have had that I didn’t learn something new and experience the marvel of human physiology.
Natalie 
I post on mommd and have to emphasize a couple of things…first of all it is WAY different to be a physician in practice with small children than a physician in practice with either NO childre or their kids are grown and out of the nest so to speak. The physicians that post on mommd for the most part are all practicing physicians with small childre so you need to see where “they” are coming from. Also, sometimes women have this notion that they can do it ALL! meaning being Suzy homemaker and the most busy/succesful/devoted physician out there. As long as YOU realize that not ALL is possible at the same time then you should be fine. The problem is that from reading the posts on mommd (not so much here) it seems that some of these women pre-meds want to be neurosurgeons/orthopedic surgeons/any surgeon/obstetrician and also be there A LOT for their childrens lives. What some of the docs are trying to emphasize is that this is NOT possible for you only have so many hours in a day. I think that most of the women that are posting there ALSO embarked on this process when they were very young and had NO clue about the pull that family has. Non-trads for the most part already know that when you have children your time is not all that much. So as long as you go in with your eyes WIDE open you will be fine. Also, life as a practicing physician (and I mean out of residency here) is not the same as in residency training and can also vary a lot depending on WHERE you practice (region wise) and how the practice you join is set up.
I agree with efex, and would like to add another point. In EVERY job there is going to be some job dissatisfaction at some point. Prior to going to medical school I had a job that I mostly really enjoyed-- but boy did I hate the beauocracy I had to deal with, and at times the paperwork and administration made me want to scream. There is no job that is perfect in every way. I think the difference for us non-trads is we realize this. If you’ve never had any job outside of medicine, you may not realize the frustrations that are part of any employment, and hence may think medicine is worse than the rest of the world, work-wise. It’s all a matter of perspective. Even so, are there times I’ve questioned the choice to go into medicine? Certainly. Usually it was at 2AM on the morning of an exam, or after a long day on the wards when I wanted to put my feet up and veg watching TV, but had to study for a Shelf exam instead. But then I get perspective again, and remember why I wanted to do this.
I’ll be starting residency in July. I’m so excited I can hardly sit still. But I know that there are times I will hate aspects of my job. That is part of any working life. But in the big picture, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.
One other thought-- once you finish training medicine can be very flexible. Not as a surgeon or some of the other specialties probably, but there are specialties and choices that can maximize flexibility.
Good luck whatever you decide to do.
Epidoc
- Epidoc Said:
Epidoc
My two cents–I am a practicing attorney, law firm partner and, now, med. school applicant. I also happen to be the son and nephew of several physicians. Physicians in my family nearly uniformly complain about their professional lives. As has already been stated, they lack perspective. Unlike most non traditional students not one of them has ever had a job where they worried about making enough money to pay their bills. Nor do they realize that people actually work similar hours for minimum wages. Moreover, none of them realize that the new mercedes (aka money) is not worth the price of missing out on time with family–consequently they are unhappy. So, keep everything in perspective. Above all else (something I learned while working for state govt.–budget well and you will be well)
Hope this helps!!!
(p.s. my father works 4 days a week for 200,000 per year and incessantly complains about work–how silly is that!!)
I hate to resurrect an older thread, but I actually was going to post a similar kind of question. I love MomMD and I do understand where the women are coming from there…Many of them are out there trying to juggle the raising of the children with their studies, residency or post-training career. MomMD uis also pretty much limited to women docs…which explains the talk about the stress of raising families and trying to combine that with a medical career. Most women don’t have the advantage of…having a wife to take care of the homefront 
It is hard to hear some of their honesty and I am curious as to whether or not those who are going to school as non-trads find their experience in medicine to be gratifying enough to make the sacrifices of family time worth it. I’d love to hear from some of those trailblazers here who have gone to school as “wiser” students 
with families and are on the other side.
kris
Yes, it is worth the effort but my family life IS suffering. I love medicine (most of the time) but I also realize that due to my involvement in this path my family is suffering. I cannot help my kids with homework hardly at all, and hence their grades are suffering a lot. My husband does ALL housework/cooking/laundry/shopping and works FT, so again he cannot spend tons of time going over homework, making sure they know xyx factoids for x/y/z exam. So this comes at a high price. My kids are older so that is a blessing but they have other needs that must be met that are hard to meet while my mind is in third year clinical rotations. Some days I come home at 10:00 pm and I left around 6:00 am, you get the picture. As long as YOU can live with this…then all is well. I can live with this but deep down I do realize that someone else will pay the price too.
I haven’t yet faced this issue myself but I’ve talked to my mentors–moms and dads alike–about this a fair amount. No one says it’s easy. But I suspect that if you are a mom and a practicing doc who is posting a lot on MomMD it’s 9 times out of ten because you’re dissatisfied and looking for answers… if you were happy with what was making you busy, then you might not be taking up any of that precious time posting on MomMD! So, while some people are just kind and civic-minded and do post their positive experiences, it’s important to keep in mind that any non-random sample of people has to be viewed with some degree of skepticism. (Similarly, since OldPreMeds is a site for mutual aid and support, there’s a lot of “you can do it!” talk here, as there should be–but it’s also important to realize that’s not a sample of all geezer pre meds and medical students, because the people who stop feeling that way usually stop posting to the site. Caveat emptor, not in a bad way, but just in an open-eyes kind of way.)
For that reason I think it’s good to get what you need from sites like this one and that one, and perhaps even more important to seek out people you like and trust who are farther along than you in this situation and ask them how they feel in conversations where you can have more give and take and nuance. Some will be happy, some will be sad, but their views will definitely be more diverse.
So true Joe…all sites will attract different types of folks and that also has to be taken into account. The sampling will be skewed.