Future of Anesthesiologists

[amLOLdipine]

Since we're making generalizations here, why stop short?

"The future's so bright I gotta wear shades" said no a̶n̶e̶s̶t̶h̶e̶s̶i̶o̶l̶o̶g̶i̶s̶t̶ physician who knows what they're talking about ever.

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[Doctor4Life1769]

Since we're making generalizations here, why stop short?

You're still around?
What year are you in med school?

 

[amLOLdipine]

You're still around?
What year are you in med school?

About 8 weeks out from 4th year, actually. Thanks for asking.

I think the better question is why you are still around. After all, aren't you way happier doing family medicine now?

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

About 8 weeks out from 4th year, actually. Thanks for asking.

I think the better question is why you are still around. After all, aren't you way happier doing family medicine now?

I'm definitely happy. I still enjoy reading the anesthesia forums and keeping up with stuff.

 

[amLOLdipine]

I'm definitely happy. I still enjoy reading the anesthesia forums and keeping up with stuff.

Glad to hear it

Look, I'm not trying to claim that anesthesiology is all sunshine and rainbows, because it's not. It has its pros and cons, and some on here might even say the cons are pretty significant. But, at the same time, I think we need to be realistic and realize that just about every field in medicine is changing, and not necessarily for the better from the physician perspective.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

Glad to hear it

Look, I'm not trying to claim that anesthesiology is all sunshine and rainbows, because it's not. It has its pros and cons, and some on here might even say the cons are pretty significant. But, at the same time, I think we need to be realistic and realize that just about every field in medicine is changing, and not necessarily for the better from the physician perspective.

I can buy that, and that's pretty much the point everyone's making. Honestly, I'm sure most would say "don't go into medicine, period."

Do what you enjoy, but the overall premise is to go into the specialty of your choice with your eyes and ears open. Do your thing, but be aware. It's not all sunshine and bubblegum.

 

[pjl]

How well do you guys think you would actually be doing in the real world? Medicine is still a great gig.
It just isnt close to the easy fruit it used to be, now you get beat on constantly to make the big money. I will take that over moving every 2 years to work my way up the corporate ladder for less money than the average physician makes.
Im sure you guys still have friends from undergraduate school, figure out how their life compares to yours...I bet you could reduce your hours to about theirs, and your stress level to about theirs and still do better financially. Most complain because they have no idea what it takes to get a 300k+ job in the other fields.
I know that the investments I have made with the differential between my attending MD salary and my many friends' salaries have gotten to the point where they can passively generate as much as my 5 best friends from college with similar intelligence and work ethic make combined. Yes I have more debt and worked more hours on average to get here, and yes I get annoyed at the world of medicine and all the changes that are occurring, but that doesnt change the fact that I could quit completely tomorrow and be just fine for the rest of my life.
The comparable jobs I personally would have obtained require either frequent international travel, moving a family across the country frequently, or other sacrifices that I would not want to make. As a physician I was able to pick a region of the country, find a job that is very unlikely to dissolve completely, where as long as I dont screw up too bad I wont get fired from, and work 50 some hours a week with 10 weeks off for quite a bit of money.
Dont whine so much. Despite all the terrible things that are going on in medicine and our specialty, there is still a lot of good that can come of a career in medicine, and specifically anesthesia. Make sacrifices if you hate your job, find a better balance.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

How well do you guys think you would actually be doing in the real world? Medicine is still a great gig.
It just isnt close to the easy fruit it used to be, now you get beat on constantly to make the big money. I will take that over moving every 2 years to work my way up the corporate ladder for less money than the average physician makes.
Im sure you guys still have friends from undergraduate school, figure out how their life compares to yours...I bet you could reduce your hours to about theirs, and your stress level to about theirs and still do better financially. Most complain because they have no idea what it takes to get a 300k+ job in the other fields.
I know that the investments I have made with the differential between my attending MD salary and my many friends' salaries have gotten to the point where they can passively generate as much as my 5 best friends from college with similar intelligence and work ethic make combined. Yes I have more debt and worked more hours on average to get here, and yes I get annoyed at the world of medicine and all the changes that are occurring, but that doesnt change the fact that I could quit completely tomorrow and be just fine for the rest of my life.
The comparable jobs I personally would have obtained require either frequent international travel, moving a family across the country frequently, or other sacrifices that I would not want to make. As a physician I was able to pick a region of the country, find a job that is very unlikely to dissolve completely, where as long as I dont screw up too bad I wont get fired from, and work 50 some hours a week with 10 weeks off for quite a bit of money.
Dont whine so much. Despite all the terrible things that are going on in medicine and our specialty, there is still a lot of good that can come of a career in medicine, and specifically anesthesia. Make sacrifices if you hate your job, find a better balance.

I find it comical that physicians (or perhaps it's only the folks in the anesthesia forum) who have this mentality that it is "medicine or international business/Wall Street."

There are other jobs to be had that awards a rewarding lifestyle. Computers, other healthcare fields, such as dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, (even CRNA?) with less time commitment and damn good pay. There is also engineering in general (perhaps not electrical, easy lay offs there), but biochemical is booming, so is biomedical. There's folks making big bucks creating their own business behind a computer. There's also folks making big money doing graphic designs or animations, etc. The point isn't "don't do medicine" but the point is "explore your options, think outside of just medicine or business." There is a lot out there and if you're truly interested in medicine, do it. If not, think about those other options. Same argument can be said about anesthesia.

 

[amLOLdipine]

I find it comical that physicians (or perhaps it's only the folks in the anesthesia forum) who have this mentality that it is "medicine or international business/Wall Street."

There are other jobs to be had that awards a rewarding lifestyle. Computers, other healthcare fields, such as dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, (even CRNA?) with less time commitment and damn good pay. There is also engineering in general (perhaps not electrical, easy lay offs there), but biochemical is booming, so is biomedical. There's folks making big bucks creating their own business behind a computer. There's also folks making big money doing graphic designs or animations, etc. The point isn't "don't do medicine" but the point is "explore your options, think outside of just medicine or business." There is a lot out there and if you're truly interested in medicine, do it. If not, think about those other options. Same argument can be said about anesthesia.

I can't speak for all of those fields, but I have friends who went to pharmacy/optometry school and the the job situation in those fields makes anesthesia look like sunshine and rainbows by comparison.

Optometry school = 4 years at 50-60k per year, and once you finish and get that O.D. degree, good luck finding a job that even pays 6 figures. National avg salary for an optometrist is 81k.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

I can't speak for all of those fields, but I have friends who went to pharmacy/optometry school and the the job situation in those fields makes anesthesia look like sunshine and rainbows by comparison.

I'm not seeing starving, jobless, broke pharmacists or optometrists. Lawyers, yes. It was an example of alternative options.

 

[amLOLdipine]

I'm not seeing starving, jobless, broke p
harmacists or optometrists. Lawyers, yes. It was an example of alternative options.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I am pointing out that it's easy to think of the grass as being greener on the other side when the reality might not be so rosy. As I said, I don't know enough about all of those fields to comment on them, but I do have enough friends in optometry/pharmacy to know a few things about how those fields are doing right now. Optometry in particular is not doing well.

Optometry school has gotten really expensive in recent years. The cost of some optometry schools is actually pretty similar to medical school. So 4 years = approximately 200k including living expenses. Pretty similar debt load compared to med school, right? Except your earning potential will barely crack 6 figures. Starting offers for an optometrist who go into an employed position are usually around 70-80k.

As far as the job situation, optometrists are getting decimated by places like Warby-Parker and Zenni optical. 10-20 years ago it would have been a very lucrative business to open your own optometry practice and charge $100 for an eye exam + $500 for a pair of glasses, but now people are catching on, paying $70 for an eye exam at Costco, and getting their glasses for $10-99 online. If you thought there was a lot of doom & gloom on these forums, just go take a look at an optometry forum:

http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php/51675-Stopping-Warby-Parker

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I am pointing out that it's easy to think of the grass as being greener on the other side when the reality might not be so rosy. As I said, I don't know enough about all of those fields to comment on them, but I do have enough friends in optometry/pharmacy to know a few things about how those fields are doing right now. Optometry in particular is not doing well.

Optometry school has gotten really expensive in recent years. The cost of some optometry schools is actually pretty similar to medical school. So 4 years = approximately 200k including living expenses. Pretty similar debt load compared to med school, right? Except your earning potential will barely crack 6 figures assuming you get a good job. Starting offers for an optometrist who go into an employed position are usually around 70-80k.

As far as the job situation, optometrists are getting decimated by places like Warby-Parker and Zenni optical. 10-20 years ago it would have been a very lucrative business to open your own optometry practice and charge $500 for a pair of glasses, but now people are catching on, paying $70 for an eye exam at Costco, and getting their glasses for $10-99 online. If you thought there was a lot of doom & gloom on these forums, just go take a look at an optometry forum:

http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php/51675-Stopping-Warby-Parker

They don't have a mandatory residency.
Pharmacists make low 6 figures. I don't know about optometry, so I'll go off your figures, especially since I don't really care. I'd probably shoot myself if I had to say "better 1... Better 2..." All day but that's a personal thought and clearly there's enough folks out there who enjoy it enough. Not having an optometry residency is clutch. That's 3-7 years of income you'd make and be able to cut into that debt before someone out of residency can start making a dent into their debt load.

 

[criticalelement]

I was able to pick a region of the country, find a job that is very unlikely to dissolve completely, where as long as I dont screw up too bad I wont get fired from, a.

Read your contract!! It says they can fire you at any time for any reason. No need to screw up. You can cancel a case, or piss of a crna. make waves while advocating for your patient with any number of people and your contract wont get renewed. In fact they can release you immediately. And its legal. The amount of interactions that can go wrong as an anesthesiologist is pretty significant. You have to be very skilled at maneuvering.

 

[amLOLdipine]

They don't have a mandatory residency.
Pharmacists make low 6 figures. I don't know about optometry, so I'll go off your figures, especially since I don't really care. I'd probably shoot myself if I had to say "better 1... Better 2..." All day but that's a personal thought and clearly there's enough folks out there who enjoy it enough. Not having an optometry residency is clutch. That's 3-7 years of income you'd make and be able to cut into that debt before someone out of residency can start making a dent into their debt load.

You're correct, they don't have to do a mandatory residency and that is one of the few pros left for optometry.

Optometry: 4 years @ 75k starting salary + optimistic eventual salary of 110k = 960k before taxes after 10 years

Physician: 4 years $ 50k during residency + 200k salary = 1.4 mil before taxes after 10 years.

The difference only grows steeper after that point, and I'm being very conservative with the physician salary here.

 

[bashwell]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I am pointing out that it's easy to think of the grass as being greener on the other side when the reality might not be so rosy. As I said, I don't know enough about all of those fields to comment on them, but I do have enough friends in optometry/pharmacy to know a few things about how those fields are doing right now. Optometry in particular is not doing well.

Optometry school has gotten really expensive in recent years. The cost of some optometry schools is actually pretty similar to medical school. So 4 years = approximately 200k including living expenses. Pretty similar debt load compared to med school, right? Except your earning potential will barely crack 6 figures. Starting offers for an optometrist who go into an employed position are usually around 70-80k.

As far as the job situation, optometrists are getting decimated by places like Warby-Parker and Zenni optical. 10-20 years ago it would have been a very lucrative business to open your own optometry practice and charge $100 for an eye exam + $500 for a pair of glasses, but now people are catching on, paying $70 for an eye exam at Costco, and getting their glasses for $10-99 online. If you thought there was a lot of doom & gloom on these forums, just go take a look at an optometry forum:

http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php/51675-Stopping-Warby-Parker

I don't know about optometry, but I like Warby Parker sunglasses. You can try (I think) 5 pairs for free before you buy too, just have them send it to you. Seems like a decent company. At least when it comes to sunglasses.

 

[amLOLdipine]

I don't know about optometry, but I like Warby Parker sunglasses. You can try (I think) 5 pairs for free before you buy too, just have them send it to you. Seems like a decent company. At least when it comes to sunglasses.

Warby Parker is great for us consumers, but it is terrible for optometrists.

Much of the profit from owning an optometry practice comes from the huge mark-ups on glasses. I remember paying $3-500 for a pair of glasses through an optometrist before glasses on the internet were a thing. Now you can pay $99 and get a very decent pair from Warby-Parker, or even less if you use a place like Zenni optical. Every person that buys a pair from Warby Parker = hundreds of dollars of lost income for an optometrist. And with Warby-parker being valued at over 1 billion, that's a lot of lost income.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

You're correct, they don't have to do a mandatory residency and that is one of the few pros left for optometry.

Optometry: 4 years @ 75k starting salary + optimistic eventual salary of 110k = 960k before taxes after 10 years

Physician: 4 years $ 50k during residency + 200k salary = 1.4 mil before taxes after 10 years.

The difference only grows steeper after that point, and I'm being very conservative with the physician salary here.

You're overlooking more regulations and infringement of physician autonomy.
You're overlooking stress burden/patient responsibility levels/?QOL
You're overlooking overall hours worked
You're overlooking malpractice insurance
You're overlooking potentially expansion of care of optometrists as they attempt to infringe on certain aspects of Ophthalmology.
You're overlooking higher tax burden for that higher income.

The gross income is certainly higher. Either way, you're still making greater than middle class salary.

Anyways, this is being nit picked to the death. My point was that there are other options besides medicine. It's definitely guaranteed a good salary, but it's still not the end-all-be-all of options. People always revert to business as the alternative when there are plenty of other options too where you can make a good living.

 

[GA8314]

How well do you guys think you would actually be doing in the real world? Medicine is still a great gig.
It just isnt close to the easy fruit it used to be, now you get beat on constantly to make the big money. I will take that over moving every 2 years to work my way up the corporate ladder for less money than the average physician makes.
Im sure you guys still have friends from undergraduate school, figure out how their life compares to yours...I bet you could reduce your hours to about theirs, and your stress level to about theirs and still do better financially. Most complain because they have no idea what it takes to get a 300k+ job in the other fields.
I know that the investments I have made with the differential between my attending MD salary and my many friends' salaries have gotten to the point where they can passively generate as much as my 5 best friends from college with similar intelligence and work ethic make combined. Yes I have more debt and worked more hours on average to get here, and yes I get annoyed at the world of medicine and all the changes that are occurring, but that doesnt change the fact that I could quit completely tomorrow and be just fine for the rest of my life.
The comparable jobs I personally would have obtained require either frequent international travel, moving a family across the country frequently, or other sacrifices that I would not want to make. As a physician I was able to pick a region of the country, find a job that is very unlikely to dissolve completely, where as long as I dont screw up too bad I wont get fired from, and work 50 some hours a week with 10 weeks off for quite a bit of money.
Dont whine so much. Despite all the terrible things that are going on in medicine and our specialty, there is still a lot of good that can come of a career in medicine, and specifically anesthesia. Make sacrifices if you hate your job, find a better balance.

I agree. Below is a quote from Dr. Jeffery Dahl (white coat investor). I feel this is very true. The problem many have is that they allowed lifestyle creep.......

"Physician fulfillment is dramatically increased when financial worries are eliminated. Trust me when I say you will enjoy the practice of medicine much more when you no longer have “to go to work”. Begin now to optimize your financial life by learning as much about personal finance and investing as you can. By doing so you will not only be wealthier, but more importantly, you will be happier."

 

[Chloroform4Life]

I agree. Below is a quote from Dr. Jeffery Dahl (white coat investor). I feel this is very true. The problem many have is that they allowed lifestyle creep.......

"Physician fulfillment is dramatically increased when financial worries are eliminated. Trust me when I say you will enjoy the practice of medicine much more when you no longer have “to go to work”. Begin now to optimize your financial life by learning as much about personal finance and investing as you can. By doing so you will not only be wealthier, but more importantly, you will be happier."

I agree. Dont buy that new Porsche or that $700,000 house and you will be happier. Now you just got to convince your wife of this fact.

 

[pjl]

I agree. Dont buy that new Porsche or that $700,000 house and you will be happier. Now you just got to convince your wife of this fact.

Yes, buy used.


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[deleted50478]

I agree. Dont buy that new Porsche or that $700,000 house and you will be happier. Now you just got to convince your wife of this fact.

You can make blanket statements like that, but they're wrong.

Depends on interest rates, rental costs, rent inflation, likelihood of moving, likelihood of value increase in the home, etc.

Unlike buying a house in a thriving city, buying a car that costs a lot and sheds value isn't wise if you don't have money to burn. We can agree on thst at least.

 

[Psai]

I can't speak for all of those fields, but I have friends who went to pharmacy/optometry school and the the job situation in those fields makes anesthesia look like sunshine and rainbows by comparison.

Optometry school = 4 years at 50-60k per year, and once you finish and get that O.D. degree, good luck finding a job that even pays 6 figures. National avg salary for an optometrist is 81k.

That's why they are both trying their darndest to get into medicine. Pharmacists seeing patients? Optometrists doing surgery? It is ridiculous that people want to do things they are not trained or qualified to do

 

[anbuitachi]

The comparisons are ridiculous. You can't compare doc to lawyer as a whole since its muchhhh easier to become a lawyer. It's not regulated like med schools. All the MD spots combined makes like the top 40 law schools or so. And you can't just say oh it's hard for others to ever reach 300k which is true for many in some fields. But they get a lot of compounding

 

[pgg]

Anyways, this is being nit picked to the death. My point was that there are other options besides medicine. It's definitely guaranteed a good salary, but it's still not the end-all-be-all of options. People always revert to business as the alternative when there are plenty of other options too where you can make a good living.

There are definitely non-medicine options that can produce happy, productive, good quality lives. Most of the people I know aren't doctors, and they don't appear to be miserable or impoverished.

But there are generally not non-medicine options with anything close to the near-guarantee to physicians' sure path and easy ability to amass significant wealth over a career.

Go dig up one of Blade's retirement / finance threads. People aren't taking about barbecues and ballgames and stress levels and happiness; they're talking about whether one "needs" $5M or $10M to retire.

Medicine is still the only path your average-to-smart person who starts with nothing but is willing to work hard can expect a salary over $200K with all of the saving and investment opportunity that brings.

Business (more specifically, entrepreneurialism) and banking always come up in these threads because they're the only careers that have the potential to exceed the earnings an average physician can expect. Those are harder, riskier paths with extraordinary failure rates yet somehow people like to push this crazy fiction that anyone who could be a doctor woulda coulda surely succeeded in those fields.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

The comparisons are ridiculous. You can't compare doc to lawyer as a whole since its muchhhh easier to become a lawyer. It's not regulated like med schools. All the MD spots combined makes like the top 40 law schools or so. And you can't just say oh it's hard for others to ever reach 300k which is true for many in some fields. But they get a lot of compounding

Nobody compared doctors to lawyers

 

[Chloroform4Life]

There are definitely non-medicine options that can produce happy, productive, good quality lives. Most of the people I know aren't doctors, and they don't appear to be miserable or impoverished.

But there are generally not non-medicine options with anything close to the near-guarantee to physicians' sure path and easy ability to amass significant wealth over a career.

Go dig up one of Blade's retirement / finance threads. People aren't taking about barbecues and ballgames and stress levels and happiness; they're talking about whether one "needs" $5M or $10M to retire.

Medicine is still the only path your average-to-smart person who starts with nothing but is willing to work hard can expect a salary over $200K with all of the saving and investment opportunity that brings.

Business (more specifically, entrepreneurialism) and banking always come up in these threads because they're the only careers that have the potential to exceed the earnings an average physician can expect. Those are harder, riskier paths with extraordinary failure rates yet somehow people like to push this crazy fiction that anyone who could be a doctor woulda coulda surely succeeded in those fields.

I agree. Also add poker players to people who can make much more money than doctors. There are guys in their early 20's who comes from nothing and are millionaires.

 

[criticalelement]

But there are generally not non-medicine options with anything close to the near-guarantee to physicians' sure path and easy ability to amass significant wealth over a career.
.

I think you may be looking at it the wrong way. Sure we make more than most people but the real question is: Is the salary that we achieve commensurate with the sacrifice that we have made to accomplish what we have accomplished. Is the salary that we make commensurate with the risk we take day in and day out? Is the salary that we make commensurate with the life being sucked out of us daily? I no longer have soul. I am soul less. I mean you may not feel the life being sucked out of you but... it is happening..
There are many many people making a lot of money that you are not aware of.

 

[Member159]

ugh.. As a 4th year that recently matched anesthesia I don't know why I keep coming back to this forum. I think this specialty is amazing and I have been wanting to do it since pre med days but after reading some of the things on this thread I don't know anymore. I haven't even started intern year yet but do you attendings think I should just reapply to a different specialty?

 

[deleted171991]

ugh.. As a 4th year that recently matched anesthesia I don't know why I keep coming back to this forum. I think this specialty is amazing and I have been wanting to do it since pre med days but after reading some of the things on this thread I don't know anymore. I haven't even started intern year yet but do you attendings think I should just reapply to a different specialty?

No.

You owe yourself to give it a try, and draw your own conclusions.

 

[bronx43]

I think you may be looking at it the wrong way. Sure we make more than most people but the real question is: Is the salary that we achieve commensurate with the sacrifice that we have made to accomplish what we have accomplished. Is the salary that we make commensurate with the risk we take day in and day out? Is the salary that we make commensurate with the life being sucked out of us daily? I no longer have soul. I am soul less. I mean you may not feel the life being sucked out of you but... it is happening..
There are many many people making a lot of money that you are not aware of.

This is capitalism. Most people who make a lot of money either had no soul to start with, or are currently having the soul sucked out of them. It ain't easy making dollar bills.

 

[amLOLdipine]

I agree. Dont buy that new Porsche or that $700,000 house and you will be happier. Now you just got to convince your wife of this fact.

Buy a low-mileage used one instead and save yourself $50k in depreciation

Or better yet, stick with a Honda Civic and put the rest towards student loans and savings.

 

[BLADEMDA]

Buy a low-mileage used one instead and save yourself $50k in depreciation

Or better yet, stick with a Honda Civic and put the rest towards student loans and savings.

My crystal balls shows a lot of jobs for graduates in Anesthesiology circa 2021. Many of them will be in the $300-$350k range after board certification. The caveat to that salary is the job itself: supervising 4 mid levels with a 50-55 hour work week. Is that what you want in life?

The best jobs are the ones where you sit your own cases. Some are fortunate enough to earn a good living while doing just that: anesthesia. IMHO, the salary one gets for supervising four rooms (soon to be 5?) just isn't worth the headaches vs sitting your own cases. Of course, true private practices make the most money by supervising multiple rooms and that is how I made my money. One must sell a bit of your soul in the supervisory model as the best care is MD care the vast majority of the time.

 

[amLOLdipine]

My crystal balls shows a lot of jobs for graduates in Anesthesiology circa 2021. Many of them will be in the $300-$350k range after board certification. The caveat to that salary is the job itself: supervising 4 mid levels with a 50-55 hour work week. Is that what you want in life?

The best jobs are the ones where you sit your own cases. Some are fortunate enough to earn a good living while doing just that: anesthesia. IMHO, the salary one gets for supervising four rooms (soon to be 5?) just isn't worth the headaches vs sitting your own cases. Of course, true private practices make the most money by supervising multiple rooms and that is how I made my money. One must sell a bit of your soul in the supervisory model as the best care is MD care the vast majority of the time.

To be perfectly honest, I would do anesthesia for a primary care level salary if it meant I could do my own cases most of the time. While money is a factor, I'm lucky enough to have a modest debt load and an SO who is also in medicine. Yes, 350k+ is nice, but I value doing my own cases vs. supervising 3-4 rooms.

Hopefully those opportunities will still be around by the time I'm out of residency.

 

[pre med 2014]

As a 3rd year med student having been through surgery and OB/gyn I think I've yet to see a real life anesthesiologist. It's all nurse anesthetists in the OR

seems like an awesome gig I wish I knew about before going into med. Almost 200K/year salaries, less school, doing pretty much doctor level work but if something goes wrong you can still call in the higher ups (MD anesthesia). And the best part is no USMLE!


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[deleted171991]

As a 3rd year med student having been through surgery and OB/gyn I think I've yet to see a real life anesthesiologist. It's all nurse anesthetists in the OR

seems like an awesome gig I wish I knew about before going into med. Almost 200K/year salaries, less school, doing pretty much doctor level work but if something goes wrong you can still call in the higher ups (MD anesthesia). And the best part is no USMLE!


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No USMLE means no true medical knowledge either.

USMLE is a great exam (except for CS, which is a joke, invented for PC purposes).

Oh, and if you don't like school(ing), you might be in the wrong profession. This one is about lifetime learning.

 

[Psai]

As a 3rd year med student having been through surgery and OB/gyn I think I've yet to see a real life anesthesiologist. It's all nurse anesthetists in the OR

seems like an awesome gig I wish I knew about before going into med. Almost 200K/year salaries, less school, doing pretty much doctor level work but if something goes wrong you can still call in the higher ups (MD anesthesia). And the best part is no USMLE!


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I remember when i was ignorant enough to think that nurses were doing doctor level work

 

[ERRES2288]

As a 3rd year med student having been through surgery and OB/gyn I think I've yet to see a real life anesthesiologist. It's all nurse anesthetists in the OR

seems like an awesome gig I wish I knew about before going into med. Almost 200K/year salaries, less school, doing pretty much doctor level work but if something goes wrong you can still call in the higher ups (MD anesthesia). And the best part is no USMLE!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app

Seriously, on the easy cases the MD pops in the epidural/pushes the propofol and then disappears never to be seen again.

 

[anbuitachi]

Nobody compared doctors to lawyers

i think you missed the point

There are definitely non-medicine options that can produce happy, productive, good quality lives. Most of the people I know aren't doctors, and they don't appear to be miserable or impoverished.

But there are generally not non-medicine options with anything close to the near-guarantee to physicians' sure path and easy ability to amass significant wealth over a career.

Go dig up one of Blade's retirement / finance threads. People aren't taking about barbecues and ballgames and stress levels and happiness; they're talking about whether one "needs" $5M or $10M to retire.

Medicine is still the only path your average-to-smart person who starts with nothing but is willing to work hard can expect a salary over $200K with all of the saving and investment opportunity that brings.

Business (more specifically, entrepreneurialism) and banking always come up in these threads because they're the only careers that have the potential to exceed the earnings an average physician can expect. Those are harder, riskier paths with extraordinary failure rates yet somehow people like to push this crazy fiction that anyone who could be a doctor woulda coulda surely succeeded in those fields.

I disagree with this. This is because the path to medicine starts early on and the weeding out occurs at a very early stage due to all the regulations. By the time you get into Medical school, you already passed a good amount of hurdles and the majority of people have already been weeded out, which is why there is that 'guarantee' of a good income. Most ppl agree that getting into medical school is the harder than finding a residency and finding a job later on. This is different from pretty much every other career field in existence. So comparing medicine's guarantee of a decent income to other fields lack of guarantee isn't the best comparison.

The average medical student is far smarter than the average population. The issue is that the people on this forum are all very smart, so some of us have this view, that some of our colleagues are not very smart simply b/c to them they appear not very smart. But yet they are still much smarter than the general population. (According to this book, med student IQ is avg 125 (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-education/publications/psychology-in-medicine/Chapter7.pdf). Assuming that's somewhere around the ballpark of the actual average MS IQ, and assuming it's a good representation of how smart you are, that puts the average medical student well inside the top 10% of IQ.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

To be perfectly honest, I would do anesthesia for a primary care level salary if it meant I could do my own cases most of the time. While money is a factor, I'm lucky enough to have a modest debt load and an SO who is also in medicine. Yes, 350k+ is nice, but I value doing my own cases vs. supervising 3-4 rooms.

Hopefully those opportunities will still be around by the time I'm out of residency.

You'd do your own cases for on average 180-200k?
I think hospital administrators should take note.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

i think you missed the point

Wouldn't be surprised. This thread went off on a tangent anyways.

 

[Chloroform4Life]

My crystal balls shows a lot of jobs for graduates in Anesthesiology circa 2021. Many of them will be in the $300-$350k range after board certification. The caveat to that salary is the job itself: supervising 4 mid levels with a 50-55 hour work week. Is that what you want in life?

The best jobs are the ones where you sit your own cases. Some are fortunate enough to earn a good living while doing just that: anesthesia. IMHO, the salary one gets for supervising four rooms (soon to be 5?) just isn't worth the headaches vs sitting your own cases. Of course, true private practices make the most money by supervising multiple rooms and that is how I made my money. One must sell a bit of your soul in the supervisory model as the best care is MD care the vast majority of the time.

ummm that is my job right now as a new grad..... No need to wait til 2021.

Luckily I'm moving on to better pasture though. Can't get away fast enough.

 

[amLOLdipine]

ummm that is my job right now as a new grad..... No need to wait til 2021.

Luckily I'm moving on to better pasture though. Can't get away fast enough.

Better pasture as in PP?

You'd do your own cases for on average 180-200k?
I think hospital administrators should take note.

I wouldn't have a problem working 40-50 hrs/week and doing my own cases for that kind of salary, provided that other benefits like malpractice/401k etc were reasonable and call was either non-existent or light.

Not everybody goes into anesthesia for the money. Same could be said of many other fields. There are plenty of primary care docs out there working 60 hour weeks for that kind of salary who are very happy overall.

With that said, my situation is probably a little different from most since I don't have 300k of med school loans. If I did have that much debt, I'd probably be looking for the highest-paying supervision job I could at least find, at least for the first 5-10 years out of residency.

 

[Chloroform4Life]

Better pasture as in PP?

Well, I am in PP now (old job). Will move to another PP gig that will be much better. Currently employed by PP group that low-balled me. Moving to partnership opportunity with a 100k increase in salary, 5 more weeks of vacation, working 45-50hr instead of 50-55hr. Still supervising though

 

[amLOLdipine]

Well, I am in PP now (old job). Will move to another PP gig that will be much better. Currently employed by PP group that low-balled me. Moving to partnership opportunity with a 100k increase in salary, 5 more weeks of vacation, working 45-50hr instead of 50-55hr. Still supervising though

Nice! I remember seeing the thread you posted about the old job a while back, so this should be a big upgrade

How do you like supervising vs. doing own cases?

 

[pjl]

Better pasture as in PP?



I wouldn't have a problem working 40-50 hrs/week and doing my own cases for that kind of salary, provided that other benefits like malpractice/401k etc were reasonable and call was either non-existent or light.

Not everybody goes into anesthesia for the money. Same could be said of many other fields. There are plenty of primary care docs out there working 60 hour weeks for that kind of salary who are very happy overall.

With that said, my situation is probably a little different from most since I don't have 300k of med school loans. If I did have that much debt, I'd probably be looking for the highest-paying supervision job I could at least find, at least for the first 5-10 years out of residency.

I would hire you in a heartbeat at that rate, you are cheaper than our CRNAs. You can do your own cases all you want, and I dont have to supervise you.


Sent from my iPad using SDN mobile app

 

[Chloroform4Life]

Nice! I remember seeing the thread you posted about the old job a while back, so this should be a big upgrade

How do you like supervising vs. doing own cases?

I still sit my own cases sometimes and while it's nice, there are advantages to supervising. I feel like I am exposed to a lot more scenarios and make more critical decisions on cases when I am supervising. I think this will help with my oral board soon because I am managing 10-15 patients and their co-morbidities a day vs 3-4 if I was doing my own cases. The downside of course is that your name is on 10-15 charts and should a bad outcome happen, you may be sued (someone should do an analysis on lawsuit of anesthesiologist supervising vs sitting own case).

Another upside of supervision is that once I get all my cases going, I can spend my time however I like. I can go pee or poo, grab food, check on case if interesting, see my next patient, check on PACU patient, etc. If I was stuck in a room, I might get bored if its an easy case. I also can't put out emergencies affecting my patients in PACU as easily (albeit, PACU emergencies are very rare).

All that said and done, I would probably decide to do my own cases if the pay/vaca/hours worked was the same.

 

[bashwell]

I would hire you in a heartbeat at that rate, you are cheaper than our CRNAs. You can do your own cases all you want, and I dont have to supervise you.


Sent from my iPad using SDN mobile app

That's another issue -- many going into anesthesia seem to be lowering their expectations for what to expect in terms of salary, etc. In turn I expect those in charge of hiring will only too happy to oblige if someone wants a lower salary! Maybe we're becoming too passive or compliant, I don't know.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

Better pasture as in PP?



I wouldn't have a problem working 40-50 hrs/week and doing my own cases for that kind of salary, provided that other benefits like malpractice/401k etc were reasonable and call was either non-existent or light.

Not everybody goes into anesthesia for the money. Same could be said of many other fields. There are plenty of primary care docs out there working 60 hour weeks for that kind of salary who are very happy overall.

With that said, my situation is probably a little different from most since I don't have 300k of med school loans. If I did have that much debt, I'd probably be looking for the highest-paying supervision job I could at least find, at least for the first 5-10 years out of residency.

Looks like you'll have plenty of job offers coming your way. Have fun!!

 

[amLOLdipine]

I would hire you in a heartbeat at that rate, you are cheaper than our CRNAs. You can do your own cases all you want, and I dont have to supervise you.


Sent from my iPad using SDN mobile app

Glad to hear I'll have at least something available when I finish residency

My mentality is to keep my expectations reasonable going in. If I come out of residency/fellowship and the 400k+ PP jobs with good hours/benefits are still around, then that's great. But I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to working for less money especially if it meant I could do more of my own cases instead of supervising. Either way, I think it's important to live frugally for the first 5-10 years out of residency and pay off loans/start saving up for the future.

 

[amLOLdipine]

That's another issue -- many going into anesthesia seem to be lowering their expectations for what to expect in terms of salary, etc. In turn I expect those in charge of hiring will only too happy to oblige if someone wants a lower salary! Maybe we're becoming too passive or compliant, I don't know.

I don't think this trend is limited to anesthesia. I'm not sure how things are in Australia where you are from, but here in the US many specialties are getting reimbursement cuts, including surgical specialties.

Setting your expectations too high leads to dissatisfaction down the road. I believe in doing the appropriate research before deciding on any field, but keeping expectations reasonable. I don't think this necessarily means one is being "passive". By all means, job-hunt, talk with your peers, and look for the high-paying jobs with good benefits. But at the end of the day, wouldn't you be happier if you went in expecting a 250k job but ended up getting a position paying 350k?