Money, Prestige, and Lifestyle

[deeman101]

The taxi cab driver has less to work with, and if sh*t hits the fan, he has less money (salary money) to back him up.

 

If you're investing enough off $400k to become a multimillionaire then you'll be dead broke if sh*t hits the fan regardless. Then you'll really loose the 9.5s.

 

Also since you repeatedly failed to check my link I guess you wouldn't want to be in this strata:

 

[thehumanmacbook]

Rads makes that much? wow I thought ophthalmology is where it was at...

[deeman101]

Rads makes that much? wow I thought ophthalmology is where it was at...

 

You can't generalize this past Quebec. Their system is uniquely setup to favour rads. Of course they have the most boring job, cranking through x-rays endlessly in front of a computer in a dark room.

[olecranon]

pathology.

[thebouque]

pathology.

 

pathology what?

[Let'sGo1990]

^Off topict, but I'm a fan of the quote in your sig.

[deeman101]

Wow. That's odd.

 

So what are those 262 doing that the rest aren't to almost DOUBLE their salaries from the next guy down?

 

And do realize that the mean without the skew of the 262 is less than 494. The median is about 239. Not bad, but not in the 700s.

 

The issue isn't that its possible for rads to make that much, but how does one do it?

 

And regarding pathology, the lifestyles great but they have no prestige, and I dont think the pay is great in all provinces..just a few.

 

 

Dedicate your life to chest xrays. A lot of them. And crank through 150 a day at least.

[TheBoss]

Dedicate your life to chest xrays. A lot of them. And crank through 150 a day at least.

 

Do they make many mistakes going that fast? Do we know?

[thebouque]

You can't generalize this past Quebec. Their system is uniquely setup to favour rads. Of course they have the most boring job, cranking through x-rays endlessly in front of a computer in a dark room.

 

Those who do it don't find it boring at all. What they find might boring are back pains, otitis, urtis, utis, check ups etc

[DOC_Ma]

Look, I don't disagree with you that doctors can make a lot of money. But not every doctor is going to get into ROAD.

 

Plus, while my dad makes less than some of the doctors you listed above, he doesn't work as hard. He has not missed a SINGLE one of my or my sisters birthdays, has always been able to take time off for all our school holidays and important milestones (granted I know that if he were a lawyer or i-banker this wouldn't be the case). Does he get stressed out sometimes? Absolutely. Does he ever put in late hours? Of course.

 

But he also doesn't have to live with the knowledge that he killed someone (as many doctors do) or worrying if he ever will. He hasn't had to tell someone that their loved one is dying. He doesn't have to live with the burden of the secrets many doctors have to keep (incest, rape, child abuse etc) that many doctors do. Being a doctor is HARD work. In my opinion, I think that is much harder than working a 100 hour work week in the office, pouring over legal documents or financial reports.

 

That is why I get so annoyed when I hear about people wanting to go into medicine because it will make them rich. First of all, if they are that smart, they will likely make a lot of money (or at least almost as much depending on the specialty) as they would as a doctor. And if they are so shallow as to care about money more than about being a good doctor (which requires so much personal sacrifice) than how are they going to be able to deal with all that ugly side to being a doctor in the long run? Worse, how are the patients going to deal when they end up with that kind of *******?

 

Look, I'm not saying that a person won't do well financially as a doctor. Of course they will. I'm not even saying its not important. Hell, I think that doctors deserve to get paid a lot because of all they need to deal with. But it just shouldn't be the main reason. If someone's main goal is to make a lot of money than medicine shouldn't be their first choice. In fact, it shouldn't be a choice at all.

 

That being said I think that most people who make it to medical school are people who deserve to be there and really want to do a lot of good.

 

 

Ofc money shouldnt be one's main reason to go into med but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be important in their decision making to pursue this career. In the real world unfortunately most docs do care about money and money is an important factor to them in terms of career choice. I don't think them any less. Humans r built to be selfish evolutionarily if altruism really is a genetic trait then it lowers your fitness in the population and whoever owns that gene will be eliminated by nature (This is not me pulling **** outta my ass, its evolution you can read up on it if you don't believe it) As you have mentioned doctors have to go through all that crap why can't them want the proper compensation? So you think they deserve to be paid a lot but they themselves should be altruistic and not want the money and expect people to pay them that much money just out of appreciation? If you do then my friend you are being too naive. I don't get your logic. Lastly, believe or not, it is absolutely much harder to replicate your dad's success than being equally successful financially in medicine (a lot of specialties not just ROAD can get u that much $$ if not more by the time the person practices in that field for 10 to 15 years).

[xkittens]

Ofc money shouldnt be one's main reason to go into med but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be important in their decision making to pursue this career. In the real world unfortunately most docs do care about money and money is an important factor to them in terms of career choice. I don't think them any less. Humans r built to be selfish evolutionarily if altruism really is a genetic trait then it lowers your fitness in the population and whoever owns that gene will be eliminated by nature (This is not me pulling **** outta my ass, its evolution you can read up on it if you don't believe it) As you have mentioned doctors have to go through all that crap why can't them want the proper compensation? So you think they deserve to be paid a lot but they themselves should be altruistic and not want the money and expect people to pay them that much money just out of appreciation? If you do then my friend you are being too naive. I don't get your logic. Lastly, believe or not, it is absolutely much harder to replicate your dad's success than being equally successful financially in medicine (a lot of specialties not just ROAD can get u that much $$ if not more by the time the person practices in that field for 10 to 15 years).

 

That's not true, it seems quite paradoxical but altrism has been observed in many animals! By self sacrificing themselves they may die in the process but they ensure the survival of the members of their herd/colony, some of which will be immediate family members. In the process they pass on their genes indirectly, and altrism lives on.

[DOC_Ma]

That's not true, it seems quite paradoxical but altrism has been observed in many animals! By self sacrificing themselves they may die in the process but they ensure the survival of the members of their herd/colony, some of which will be immediate family members. In the process they pass on their genes indirectly, and altrism lives on.

 

Our definition of altruism clearly differs. I am talking about absolute altruism. What you are talking about is just Kin selection. Prairie dogs bark when they see predators to lure the predators attention and in order increase their own risk of being killed. They do that not because they r truly altruistic but simply because they can save more genetically related relatives in that way and hence actually giving them a higher fitness than simply saving their own lives. So in conclusion they r selfish not altruistic. Same as the example you gave. It's not altruism. And this applies to all species. Natural selection is at work!

 

ps: I really liked evolution in undergrad and we looked at a lot of studies on altruism. None of them were actually altruism, they simply appeared bizarre at first against the rule of natural selection but in the end they were all examples that gave the sacrificer a higher fitness by sacrificing their own lives. It is not truly altruism.

[ubcMDhopeful]

I think we have found ourselves a resident troll of the forums.

[apache]

i'm just going to quote thomas kuhn:

 

"Each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent. "

 

"To turn Karl [Popper]'s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition of science. Once a field has made the transition, critical discourse recurs only at moments of crisis when the bases of the field are again in jeopardy. Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers."

 

I'd also point out that cultural evolution has a huge deal to play with the rapid development of human cognition (last 80-200 k years that we have evidence of).

 

also, read this:

 

http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article010110.html

 

Michael Tomasello actually completely flips a lot of axioms of evolutionary psych around, our emergent cognition because so complex and abstract, un niche dependent that you can have absolute altruism (i.e. the german cannibal and his willing subject), there's no reciprocal altruism or kin selection there, unless you're going to claim absolute altruism is impossible because we always get "something" out of an action, whether that be emotional satisfaction, etc.

 

"altruism" is simply to much of an emergent phenomenon to attribute to a genetic trait, or even cluster of traits, neuroplasticity is insane, and we're born to adapt to our niches, and this is even adhering to a reductionistic materialistic paradigm.

 

Our definition of altruism clearly differs. I am talking about absolute altruism. What you are talking about is just Kin selection. Prairie dogs bark when they see predators to lure the predators attention and in order increase their own risk of being killed. They do that not because they r truly altruistic but simply because they can save more genetically related relatives in that way and hence actually giving them a higher fitness than simply saving their own lives. So in conclusion they r selfish not altruistic. Same as the example you gave. It's not altruism. And this applies to all species. Natural selection is at work!

 

ps: I really liked evolution in undergrad and we looked at a lot of studies on altruism. None of them were actually altruism, they simply appeared bizarre at first against the rule of natural selection but in the end they were all examples that gave the sacrificer a higher fitness by sacrificing their own lives. It is not truly altruism.

[apache]

There's a bunch wrong with this:

 

Human behaviour is infinitely complex, you can change gene expression by running, or exposure to excess cortisol, plus we hack half our neurons we're born with away, we're meant to adapt to our niche. So the proposition that altruism is a genetic trait is a fallacy, it's just evolutionary psych (and biology in general) typically staying within the domain of language, and avoiding the mathematical complexity and infiniteness of potential behaviour.

 

Never reference someone listen to something that is stated by an authority in that field, implicit in that statement is that evolutionary psychology isn't highly criticized (and even laughed at and mocked the department I use to work in), and that it has conclusive evidence for it's claims, instead of post hoc theoretical explanations for behaviour that are as coherent as 20 other explanations that could explain a behaviour, for either opinion, for example women tend to find men with characteristics which emerge from higher testosterone to be more attractive, however, testosterone greatly suppresses your immune system, so now we have the ad hoc explanation that this is because it shows that the person has a overly strong immune system, to compensate for the cortisol, but then wouldn't the off the charts cortisol neutralize that advantage, you can argue that since women tended to have sex with these men a lot their daughters were biologically wired to be attracted to them, which means sons with these features would be advantageous because of genes that control female attraction, or a snowball effect... sexual selection, per se (which is a tautological fallacy).

 

Also, whenever there seems to be an "empirical" test of a theory (which are intrinsically fallible, anyways, because they're only proving that the decisions they anticipate would occur if their post hoc theory were correct, which is a tautological fallacy, because many of the phenomena empirically investigated are already known to occur, and showing the occurrence does not establish a causal relationship between the events which are postulated to "have shaped" x behaviour, but just merely that x behaviour exists, which we already knew in the first place, also, evolutionary explanations tend to be overly vague in the sense that they're like horoscopes, they can explain any result.

 

The only way I think you can justify humans being intrinsically selfish is by saying that every behaviour, based on the axiom that all behaviours are somewhat satisfying, and the assumption that all consequences, no matter, how unpleasant they may seem, are self satisfying (suicide bombers emotional bliss, people who are happy in a state of depression because they rather the devil they know than that which is foreign to them)... but again, this breaks into language and rhetoric, as much of evolutionary psychology does, lol, which is why I used to love to call it creative writing class.

 

I don't view the issue at hand as a moral issue, people are entitled to have whatever motives they want. Doctors are overpaid imo, but not across the board, certain specialties certainly need a salary shave whereas I think others are appropriately compensated. But, like anything, it comes down to social groups lobbying for self-preservation, and a lot of the medical specialties have done a good job keeping trainees down, minimizing img's getting in on their turf, and making sure procedures remain highly valued and that the public thinks they need you and your worth half a mil to be a radiologist (i can find an equally competent radiologist in india who'll do it for 50k, after passing all his exams in the 99th percentile, but foreign education is "inferior" of course, that's why we give people standardized exams, and say that joe blow who barely passed med school is more competent that top foreign grad, who aced the whole gamut of exams we put foreigners through, but the sell is that we need "canadian quality education, and canadians"... so we can continually artificially manipulate the supply demand curve.

 

Humans r built to be selfish evolutionarily if altruism really is a genetic trait then it lowers your fitness in the population and whoever owns that gene will be eliminated by nature (This is not me pulling **** outta my ass, its evolution you can read up on it if you don't believe it) As you have mentioned doctors have to go through all that crap why can't them want the proper compensation? So you think they deserve to be paid a lot but they themselves should be altruistic and not want the money and expect people to pay them that much money just out of appreciation? If you do then my friend you are being too naive. I don't get your logic.

[apache]

btw, docma, you might enjoy this read on medicine as a profession, and some of the pros and cons of self-regulation, one big thing is individual specialties ability to control grad numbers, lobby for certain facilities to be built which cater to certain specialties, the potential to artificially keep physician salaries high etc. the reason medicine's such as a safe bet is it's essentially "unionized" and a mechanic that can save your life is worth more than one who can fix your car, especially when they bargain collectively, meaning on an open market you may get more, or less. if you want to read the whole article here's the link:

 

http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/40background_docs/White_Paper.pdf

 

3) Self-regulation

 

The general concept of self-regulation has been outlined above in the section on organizational roles. In some parts of the world, the term “self-governance” is used interchangeably with self-regulation, while in other areas the regulatory function is felt to be one part of the overall governance function. For ease of understanding, the term “self- regulation” will be used in this document.

 

It is fair to say that the vast majority of representative medical associations, if not all of them, support and encourage the concept of self-regulation of the medical profession. From a physician standpoint, it would not be advantageous to have their actions or clinical decisions evaluated by lay people and members of the public who are not likely to have the necessary training or experience to make those judgements. In addition, this is an area where individual physicians can demonstrate their collective sense of responsibility rather than through sometimes abstract principles or declarations.

 

From the standpoint of the general public, they need to have confidence that the regulation of physicians is fair, open and transparent and that physicians are held liable for any clinical or professional transgressions in a significant and meaningful way so that such transgressions will not be repeated in the future. They need to be confident that self-regulation does not mean self-protection. Some degree of public involvement in regulatory bodies is now generally well accepted, but physicians usually become concerned when consideration is given to having these organizations constituted with a public majority, meaning that decision making will then be outside the control of the profession.

 

According to the website of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the self-regulatory body for physicians practicing in this Canadian province, the relationship between the College, the profession and the public is as follows:

 

“The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario governs the practice of medicine in the public interest. It does not exist to protect the medical profession. The profession's interests are well represented by other bodies, including the Canadian Medical Association."

 

The medical profession has been permitted by legislation to play a leading role in the protection of the public. It does this through the College. This is what is meant by "self-regulation." Self-regulation should never be confused with professional autonomy. The profession, through the College, is always accountable to the public.”

 

It is not uncommon for there to be a somewhat strained relationship between representative medical associations and those organizations involved in physician self-regulation. While the public may see regulatory bodies as occasionally overly protective of physicians and not always acting in the best interests of the public, some physicians find them unnecessarily intrusive, interventionist and restrictive when it comes to regulating the day-to-day practice of medicine. However, in order to preserve the privilege of self-regulation, the medical profession must be clearly seen to be acting in the best interests of the public and not of the profession itself.

The concept of self-regulation of the medical profession presents a situation where representative medical associations may find themselves with a choice to make, between representing the desire of their membership for more freedom to practice medicine in a fully autonomous way with little “unnecessary” regulatory intrusion, versus supporting the public desire to strengthen the regulatory oversight of physicians and increase the transparency of the system. As suggested previously, and for reasons outlined above, the interests of the public and patients should take precedence in this type of situation.

 

What NMA’s can do on the issue of self-regulation

This does not mean that NMA’s should acquiesce to any and all demands of regulators and the public. It does mean that they should support, through policy, advocacy and action, legitimate efforts to improve the quality of medical care and outcomes through regulatory oversight of their physician members.

 

Unduly intrusive activities that have not been shown to improve the quality of patient care are not necessarily appropriate. Efforts at revalidation of physicians should not simply be exercises intended to reassure the public and legislators, but should truly strive to improve the quality of medical practice, and should be based on solid evidence demonstrating that the means used will be efficient and effective. It may be up to NMA’s to help ensure that this evidence exists and is incorporated in a meaningful way.

NMA’s should develop policy or position statements clarifying their support for self- regulation and outlining the importance of this concept to the maintenance of medical professionalism. They should assist their members in understanding that self-regulation cannot be perceived as being protective of physicians, but must maintain the support and confidence of the general public.

[BrendanJ]

Bluntness: true story with details modified to preserve confidentiality.

 

You tell a family member of a patient that his/her mom/dad won't make it through the night. As you've done with every other similar scenario, you pour your heart into doing everything in your power to comfort and support this family member while at the same time doing your best to keep the patient alive through the night as well. In spite of all your efforts the the family member goes home and kills him/herself. Then, after other family members give the patient news of the suicide, your patient dies as well.

 

You might begin to to understand that medicine is more than than "money, prestige, and lifestyle" when this happens to you, because many permutations of it will over your career. I can think handfuls I've experienced in the past few years. A version of the above scenario occurred just this week. If "money, prestige, and lifestyle" is your raison d'etre, good luck coping, surviving, and sleeping at night. I firmly believe that pure extrinsic motivation is inadequate.

 

This thread makes me want to vomit. And being covered in a patient's feculent vomit doesn't even make me want to vomit.

 

Please know what you are getting into and do it for the right reasons or not at all.

[IamIDP]

What's the point of this thread. It seams like to me that most people here just want to become a doctor for #1 reason: MONEY. First of all, there are better ways to make money than becoming a doctor.

[ThomasRolland]

What's the point of this thread. It seams like to me that most people here just want to become a doctor for #1 reason: MONEY. First of all, there are better ways to make money than becoming a doctor.

 

..Such as?

[xkittens]

..Such as?

 

My favourite:

Real estate agent. requires like 1 or 2 years of college, and you're set for life.

Assuming you're a good salesperson that is.

[kylamonkey]

..Such as?

 

Get a degree in Geology and go find a gold mine. It's not as hard as you might think.

[medigeek]

My favourite:

Real estate agent. requires like 1 or 2 years of college, and you're set for life.

Assuming you're a good salesperson that is.

 

And what percentage of people are top of the line salespersons? The money in real estate is there for the top 5% of real estate agents.

[taiga gal]

Get a degree in Geology and go find a gold mine. It's not as hard as you might think.

 

better yet, a diamond mine....

[apache]

this is a stupid thread. if you're cautious and think that (or worry that) you're mediocre and want a hedged bet that comes along with a lot of unpleasant ****, go into medicine, it will pay you well, but it's not easy. if you think you have talent, and are a risk taker who is internally motivated and knows inside themselves, and not in a statistical salary breakdown, that they can be financially successful, not as a virtue of holding a license, but of their own talent, then go into something else, simple, done.

 

And what percentage of people are top of the line salespersons? The money in real estate is there for the top 5% of real estate agents.

[xkittens]

this is a stupid thread. if you're cautious and think that (or worry that) you're mediocre and want a hedged bet that comes along with a lot of unpleasant ****, go into medicine, it will pay you well, but it's not easy. if you think you have talent, and are a risk taker who is internally motivated and knows inside themselves, and not in a statistical salary breakdown, that they can be financially successful, not as a virtue of holding a license, but of their own talent, then go into something else, simple, done.

 

A round of applause for Muse's shortest post ever!

also, +1