Mark Long2 said:I agree with you on certain points, but it has to be said that a career in medicine depends HEAVILY on which specialty one chooses.
Dermatology, ophthalmology, psychiatry, nuclear medicine, occupational medicine, or family practice are examples of specialties where practitioners enjoy a fairly normal life, not just after their training, but during it as well. Of course, there are still sacrifices, hierarchies, and on-call shifts, but you can't compare that to the grind and Spartan regime found on an internal medicine or surgical ward...🙄
In our hospitals, there is a terrible imbalance between departments... on some wards, people are falling over from exhaustion and have enough work for 20 hours a day, while on others, at 1:00 PM, it's empty; the doctors head home, leaving only the nurses and the on-call staff, and people literally have nothing left to do.
Totally agree. I specialized in internal medicine and I am absolutely exhausted every single day. There is zero downtime here, not to mention dealing with lines of frustrated patients outside the door that lead to constant friction. It's just me, two nurses, and one resident. It's brutal, especially when I see colleagues in other departments making the same salary but getting tired in a week what takes me a whole day to process. You need a genuine passion and a strong stomach for this; if you're just chasing a paycheck, you won't make it through med school, and if you do, you'll be miserable. Plus, residencies average four years, sometimes seven... just imagine that.