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What other fields do you think fit the bill?
Cardiology or Radiology?
- Thread starter josephf1
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What other fields do you think fit the bill?
Remember I am not talking about income itself. I am talking about quality of life. The balance between money and lifestyle. Sometimes you make a dollar and you work for it 2 dollars and sometimes you work for it half a dollar.
The fact is a 450K income does not give you a happier life than a 350K.
Derm, Ortho, ENT, Ophtholmology, Urology, breast surgery, plastics, radiation oncology, .....
at 11 pm saturday, it is not uncommon to see a cardiologist in the ED seeing a patient. A radiologist reading a stroke head CT, an interventional cardiologist is stenting an MI and an interventional radiology is embolizing a splenic rupture.At the same time a dermatologist is enjoying the money he made with his family. A lot of other fields that seem to be tough, are not really tough in the attending level. Barely you see a urologist come to the hospital at night. At most they get a call and they say that they will see the patient in the morning.
The fact is a 450K income does not give you a happier life than a 350K.
Derm, Ortho, ENT, Ophtholmology, Urology, breast surgery, plastics, radiation oncology, .....
at 11 pm saturday, it is not uncommon to see a cardiologist in the ED seeing a patient. A radiologist reading a stroke head CT, an interventional cardiologist is stenting an MI and an interventional radiology is embolizing a splenic rupture.At the same time a dermatologist is enjoying the money he made with his family. A lot of other fields that seem to be tough, are not really tough in the attending level. Barely you see a urologist come to the hospital at night. At most they get a call and they say that they will see the patient in the morning.
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If you can stand it, Rad Onc is probably the best bang for the buck; No call/no weekends, not sure how it is in private practice, but the RO at my place, big academic place with stand alone cancer center, see <10 patients/day and many of those are follow-ups. When I was an intern, had an RO just wheel a patient over who was in respiratory distress and basically ring the doorbell and run away. If any RO patients need to be admitted for something RO related, medicine or IR, if they are mangaging them (super wierd) will admit them. They make lots of money too.
In the end though, you really have to do what you love; it's a huge cliche, but if you enjoy what you do, you won't really care about the money, because let's be realistic, no one in medicine is starving, you will make a good living; and more importantly you'll be good at it.
I don't mind coming in the middle of the night to coil a spleen or see a GI bleeder, even if I don't do anything for that person; I'm sure many cards people here will say they don't mind coming in to do a coronary angioplasty; sure it gets old if you do it every day for a week, but after you refresh you look forward to coming to work. There isn't enough money in the world to make me want to look at rashes all day or draw contours around tumors; on the other hand a good friend of mine who is derm loves it, loves the science and pathology of it and a rad onc I know will actually come in on weekends to due treatments every once in a while just because he likes it and to accomadate his patients.
So don't do it for the money, especially since reimbursements and the economy changes so much.
As far as rads vs. cards; if you're talking IR vs. IC, it's almost like being a generalist vs. specialist in any field; IR is the general surgery of endovascular and minimally invasive stuff; whereas IC is more specialized. Also IR is heavily into oncology, which you can sub-specialize in, and is endovascular field (cards/vascular/rads) that is involved in minimally invasive loco-regional tumor therapy.
In both fields you can obviously choose to do only imaging and never touch a patient for the rest of your career. This is broader in rads (anywhere in the body) vs. cards (heart)
I actually liked both fields; the main reason I chose IR is, the field is in flux, in a similar way rad onc was before it separated from radiology, so the chance to be part of a group of people involved in pioneering the way for IR to become it's own separate specialty was very attractive to me. I don't exactly know what kind of research is going on in cards, but the research in IR was also very appealing.
In the end though, you really have to do what you love; it's a huge cliche, but if you enjoy what you do, you won't really care about the money, because let's be realistic, no one in medicine is starving, you will make a good living; and more importantly you'll be good at it.
I don't mind coming in the middle of the night to coil a spleen or see a GI bleeder, even if I don't do anything for that person; I'm sure many cards people here will say they don't mind coming in to do a coronary angioplasty; sure it gets old if you do it every day for a week, but after you refresh you look forward to coming to work. There isn't enough money in the world to make me want to look at rashes all day or draw contours around tumors; on the other hand a good friend of mine who is derm loves it, loves the science and pathology of it and a rad onc I know will actually come in on weekends to due treatments every once in a while just because he likes it and to accomadate his patients.
So don't do it for the money, especially since reimbursements and the economy changes so much.
As far as rads vs. cards; if you're talking IR vs. IC, it's almost like being a generalist vs. specialist in any field; IR is the general surgery of endovascular and minimally invasive stuff; whereas IC is more specialized. Also IR is heavily into oncology, which you can sub-specialize in, and is endovascular field (cards/vascular/rads) that is involved in minimally invasive loco-regional tumor therapy.
In both fields you can obviously choose to do only imaging and never touch a patient for the rest of your career. This is broader in rads (anywhere in the body) vs. cards (heart)
I actually liked both fields; the main reason I chose IR is, the field is in flux, in a similar way rad onc was before it separated from radiology, so the chance to be part of a group of people involved in pioneering the way for IR to become it's own separate specialty was very attractive to me. I don't exactly know what kind of research is going on in cards, but the research in IR was also very appealing.
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Agree with above. Shark, you're on a roll for only having two posts
Archives of Medicine published an interesting physician compensation update where they stratified by pay/hr worked. Neurosurgery and PMR were among the highest...Neurosurgery was high because the numerator was high, PMR was high because the denominator was low.
link?
