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ORIGINAL: AlexRodriguez
Derm? OK, you got a point there, they have a sweet gig.Rad onc? I guess if you like seeing patients die regularly. By the way, they’re due for a huge pay slash too
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Allergist? I really don’t know anything about this field so I can’t comment. What I do know is that it can be tricky to obtain the allergy fellowship. Also, how many of these have you met? Can’t imagine it’s a booming field.
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Pain? I can’t think of a more aptly named field. Perhaps you like phone calls in the middle of the night requesting urgent Percocet refills. I’ll pass.
Derm’s good but as noted in [i]The House of God[/i]: Naked skin = turn on; naked skin = turn off. Prescribing accutane to pimply teenagers and peddling botox to SAHM’s is no doubt lucrative but the derms that really clean up are the ones that do surgery in their own offices and also do the dermatopathology.
Pain seems like a good gig to me. Middle of the night drug seeking crap gets turfed to the ER. Lots of little procedures = good reimbursements. Little, if any, thinking during the day. Malpractice risk almost zero, especially when compared to traditional anesthesiologist legal exposure.
Allergy not booming? Think again. I went to an allergist for a couple of years to get over my seasonal hayfever (mixed results) but the dude always had a packed waiting room. Nurses do the skin tests and injections (lots of billable procedures again); he just shows up for a courtesy call. Zero call issues.
At my old job, I’d invariably have the thought at least once a night (usually after 3AM when I’d be willing my eyes to open and my brain to pay attention to the umpteenth chest CTA the ER monkeys had ordered) that [i]I should have picked rad onc[/i]. Rad onc sees a very limited subset of cancer patients–i.e. the ones that radiation can help in some way. When they get terminal, it’s the med onc wretches that have to oversee the final approach. Close to zero call issues and low malpractice exposure.
But rads is good and I don’t have regrets (certainly not angry about it like some previous posts) and it’s not like I’m going to go back and do another residency at this stage of life. And being a hospitalist? In the immortal words of John McEnroe: [i]YOU CANNOT BE [b][u]SERIOUS[/u][/b]!!!![/i] Look, I did an internship years ago and still recall it as an unpleasant part of my life. Any rad that thinks being a hospitalist looks good is in the wrong practice situation. Get out.
