>be a doctor
>specialize in something like radiology
>make 500k a year
>respected by everyone
>save lives
>have your own private business with no one to take orders from
It seems to good to be true. Where's the downside to all this ? I know med school is hell but I don't mind an academic life for a few years and have great grades.
you offset your earning power by a good 6-10 years or so (including having to pay back 200-300k in loans).
high demand for those cushy high paying positions
cutthroat environment of medical school
scheduling your life around your work instead of vice-versa
having essentially a pretty monotonous job, with little actual science involved
having to interact with normies
The downside is that nothing you listed is entirely true, most of it is far more complex and laden with catches than you think, and some is outright not a thing.
The first two issues:
>specialize in radiology
>have a private practice
No. Not unless you're independently wealthy, and in a very specific sort of area. You need referrals for patients insurance to cover it (which means being in some network, with many smaller primary care facilities around. Hospitals generally have their own radiology), you need to actually buy and maintain the equipment, you need to pay staff to do all the paperwork, arguing with insurance companies, interacting with patients, etc. Yet another expense. Many private practices find it financially infeasible for that reason alone, you can't do it all yourself, and staff is expensive.
>save lives
That's not a thing with radiology. You're usually just the one telling them how they're fucked up or unremarkable.
>make 500k a year
Nah. Not if you're on salary, and not if you practice privately. And all the loans. Again, leading back to being independently wealthy. At which point, who cares about your salary? You don't need it. You might not be just playing and filling your time, but you certainly don't need it. Do you know the cost of a minimal CT scanner alone?
By the jimminy geez user, I don't know where people get this stuff. It's mechanically impossible, a thing of dreams, illusion, and fantasy.
>One of the highest suicide rates when broken down by profession (twice as likely to kill yourself when compared to the general population)
>High dependence on political lobbying, which means that technically your profession has no inherent value to it. Doctors keep high wages because of artificial market control and political lobbying, should anything go wrong you will end up earning as much as a Cuban doctor: 20 bucks a month.
>You attract gold diggers and other despicable people who want to use you. Very few professions have this quality, even "businessman" lacks it because a businessman could just be some guy about to declare bankruptcy, but everyone knows that (at least for now) doctors are always rich so gold diggers rush to be with you then cheat on you/kill you and then collect child support/life insurance.
>Stupid people have your number and can call you all the time.
>You have pharmaceutic companies on your back pressuring to illegally promote their new drugs despite their lack of research. If you decline to cooperate with their market plan then they will literally use their industry connections to destroy your career, so you are forced to be a bad person to be a doctor.
>malpractice lawsuits
You will have to deal with sick people everyday, which is mostly annoying and disgusting, and also quite risky. You can always infect yourself with what ever nasty shit your patients have.
A good chunk of your salary, up to $200k+ if you're new, his to malpractice insurance.
Radiology machine send data to third world countries to analyst or deep learning automatization radiology in next 10 years
Do you have any idea what radiologists do?
>private practice
You join am established group, nitwit. You put your time in and make partner after a while assuming your contract isn't shit. Hospitals contract with groups. Groups cover multiple hospitals.
>save lives
Um, you save people's lives all the time. Guy comes in with stroke, CT his head, you read it, clinicians treat, you help saved the life.
OP, radiology is a great specialty. I'm a third year med student looking to go into it. I've done research with the department at my school and have had some exposure to it, and will be doing a rotation in it soon.
Advantages
>don't have to follow complicated annoying patients with psych and social issues. Procedures that you do have a beginning and an end. End of procedure=bye bye patient.
>make good money but more like 350k. The days of 500k+ are over.
>you are the guy who makes the diagnosis quite often. Everyone gets scanned nowadays
>cool technology
>complex field that is ever changing. Threat by midlevels is less intense
>cool fellowships you can do after to sub-specialize e.g. neuroradiology
>ability to do lots of procedures if that is what you're interested in
Disadvantages
>you sit in a dark room and read images all day long
>little patient interaction, if that's your thing
>you don't move around a lot
>You join am established group, nitwit.
I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. It's like you don't understand what I wrote.
>Guy comes in with stroke, CT his head, you read it
Depending, you may or may not be the one doing the imaging, and you may or may not be the one reading it. In a group, often, you are not both.
>you help saved the life.
From a broad and looser perspective. You can consider yourself part of a grander chain, but in your everyday, you really just figured out what was fucked. Other people fixed it. You are always only a proxy to determine what's fucked.
The trap is as follows - It isn't Mathematics or Physics and therefore isn't as academically rewarding or as fun to do. That is the trap.