The point is, there are fields that offer far better long-term lifestyle options. Outpatient pediatricians that make the amount an ED doc working 6 shifts a month makes aren't the ones taking call at odd hours of the night. And OBGYN, cards, CC, neo, surg, and anesthesia (usually) are not lifestyle fields. Outpatient peds (most pediatricians), the vast majority of PCPs, and most radiologists I've known don't take call.
PM&R is awesome. I've never met a physiatrist who didn't absolutely love his/ her field and what they do. Plus, they have a solid amount of different fellowships people can go into it if they want.
Everywhere around here they have specific guys hired to work nights or a teleradiology company to do prelim reads so they don't have to do night float. I don't think there's a single place outside of the two big academic centers where the day radiologists take call that I've heard of.
Good Q. I think you answered your own question, though-- it's not well known. I'd venture to say that the majority of med students have never even heard of it (especially in their first 2 years). Further, it's a very small field and isn't as romanticized as Surgery, EM, etc. It's not sexy and for most it doesn't have that "cool" factor, but for someone who has been around the block-- it's practical.
That's like saying that hospitalists don't have day jobs because 10% of them are nocturnists. Night radiology is the exception, not the norm.
did you know if you combine Allopathic and Aladdin, it becomes Allodin. His three wishes would make health care practitioners homeless.
I'll address the hospitalist bit later, as I'm dissecting the most recent report I can find on call and night coverage. But as to psych: greater than half of psychiatrists do not take any insurance at all. 60% of psychiatrists work in solo private practices that are worthless for a hospital to buy up, as the patients are generally there to see that particular psychiatrist, and are unlikely to just go to some new provider (the worthlessness of solo, cash-only psych practices has been addressed in the psych forums if you want to dig for it). Psychiatric care is more a service than a commodity, and there's more than enough of a shortage for you to run a cash business at your leisure. Given the choice of lifestyle or seeing a diverse patient population, sorry, but I'm taking lifestyle every time. As to potential psychologist prescribing rights, even in the states where they can legally prescribe, few have done so: 33 in New Mexico as of 2011, 70 in Louisiana as of 2012, and 100 in the military as of 2012. Psych NPs are a far more real threat, but few NPs want to go into psychiatry with the more lucrative (and sexy) options out there (EM, derm, critical care, etc). In any case, even with the psych NPs and psychologists out there, we're terribly short on psychiatrists and psychiatric care in general, a trend that is very unlikely to change in the next 20 years.
When the ROAD acronym was created, EM didn't even exist as a specialty, for the record. Maybe we should change it to ROADIE, throw EM and immunology in there.
I've always wondered however, how you reconcile the obvious dissonance that results when practitioners try and "sell" their field by bragging about the lifestyle benefits?
Rads isn't nearly as lucrative as it used to be. Have @Kaustikos open a vein center and those pink Rock Stud shoes will be yours!
Yeah, they can't answer me either although like most things residency isn't the same as practice.
