Is it worth becoming a doctor in 2025 Anon Babble?

I'm an ER doc. Hard question to answer. The pay is really, really good. Much better than laypeople realize. I've saved and invested about $4m in less than a decade of practice. And, speaking only for myself, the lifestyle is pretty great -- I'm contracted for 10 shifts a month, which leaves 20ish days every month for me to do fun stuff I enjoy. But the work is stressful and draining and repetitive, and of questionable utility a lot of the time (how hard should we really be working to save demented shriveled great grandmas who can't even tell you their name?). And med school and residency suck unholy goat balls and will devour a decade of your life you won't get back.

Glad I did it, I guess, but I wouldn't wish the training part of it on my worst enemy.

And yeah AI isn't gonna replace physicians any time soon. Midlevel practitioner scope creep (NPs and PAs doing more and practicing more independently than they should be) is a more near-term threat, I guess, but I think until the baby boomers die off it will be salad days for us in healthcare.

Definitely, it's a noble profession, just don't corrupt yourself to drug companies for money.

t. retard that didn't get his driver's license because he fell for the same tech bro hype around self driving cars ten years ago and has to bus it with Tyrone

Anyways OP any of the quasi guilded professions (medicine, law, engineering, etc) are all good upper middle class jobs if you are able not suck at them and know how to network.

But the work is stressful and draining and repetitive, and of questionable utility a lot of the time

You can do any other job with all of that baggage but without the 4 mill

engineering

No lol not anymore.

Doctors are at least just as much a trade as plumber, until robots get extremely fine motor skills.

most doctors are going to be replaced by AI. surgeons and specialists are going to have an extra decade or two but they are on the chopping block as well

you realize not all doctors are surgeons?

Fair point. There's a big opportunity cost associated with the absurdly long training time, though, that isn't seen in other professions. Seriously, I want my 20s back.

Medicine is a literally a medieval guild. There's so much entry gating into the profession that it keeps the numbers way down and the pay way up.

Nah, AI will make it easier for the doctors but you're still going to need them to oversee the AI. At best maybe a handful of less doctors will be required but the profession isn't going anywhere.

that's whats happening right now. they are already using chatgpt to help diagnose people. this was science fiction only a few years ago. couple years from now AI doctors will be common. even if you dont agree with my timetable, it's inevitable

[spoiler]unvaxxed[/spoiler] medfag here. 10 years of experience.
AMA.

I hope so. I'm going to start medschool this year.

hahahahaha, hope you are a black tranny activist else you're fucked
t. anon MD

Nah. Dumb primary care and urgent care NPs will use OpenEvidence and other AI slop to try to diagnose and treat people, thereby creating more work for people like me. But you won't see LLM bullshit supplanting doctors.

What you will see in healthcare is AI used as a flow/efficiency and care quality adjunct. They're already trying to make me use AI to write clinical notes, which I've declined to do. And radiologists use AI to screen for things like little baby subsegmental PEs (pulmonary embolisms) which are often really hard to see and are frequently missed, even by decent radiologists.

Do you think politics will continue to get in the way, or maybe it doesn't already

Are you a pedophile?

it if you can get into private practice.

good luck medfag
literally all the clinics will be private equity-owned or hospital-owned by the time you complete school and residency

I worked for a medical school, and 70% of the graduates passed their tests but are functionally retarded. No communication skills, they speak like they're still frat bros
or they're foreign

.

depends on what kind of doctor you are.

there are never quite enough specialists to go around, the bots are really good at general diagnosis so for sure find a model you like and feed it textbooks, less time narrowing it down is more time fixing it

AI doctors

fat chance, maybe for things like reading mammograms, but at the end of the day, AI cannot replace a doctor physically listening to your heart and lungs nor tolerating your mostly bullshit complaints

Absolutely not. I wouldn't recommend it. If you're that smart and disciplined, do something else.

shut the fuck up poojet

yes unless the government makes healthcare free, than your wages go down and you have to work like a slave lol

Becoming a technician would be the way to go these days, something like MRI since they are just operation the system already with the patient and get paid BIG BUCKS.

This is a CUNNY board, sex!

Actually echo tech is where it's at right now, from what I hear. Top pay and too few of them to meet the demand, since there's no such thing as a cardiologist who doesn't want an echo.

A valuable doctor will do surgical things, which will not be easily replaced even by robots

You either coping or haven't been following new models out there. lol
nope, you don't need a lawyer rn, you might need a runner boi in the court only so you don't do it yourself. Doctors are literally being replaced with AI as we speak, from diagnosis to image processing, and next surgeries, it won't happen next year but within 10 years oh yeah for sure, which is by the time you done your general medicine school let alone being a surgeon.
Rule of thumb: any knowledge based job can and will be replaced by AI soon, any physical one it will be later, some probably never like trades or such, however, these jobs won't be paid properly if the one paying it can't find a job (a doctor can't pay a plumber because he got replaced) so it will be overall bleak.

listening to your heart and lungs

lol, literally machines already do that, just feed those to a trained system and will have an accurate results, you probably won't need to do a test anyway you just scan your apple watch when you go to the ER and it will 'securely' upload your readings past 3 months. get with time, grandpa

In the UK a lot of cardiologists read and do their own echos instead of having techs lead - its easier just to lead the probe in real time. Not like CT/MRI where you're running a set slice set that might as well be done by a tech lol.

Why did you choose ER? Shifts seem brutal. Why not just do derm or breast DR lol.

No. It’s a cuck job where you’re beholden to Medicare/medicaid like they’re your pimp.

just scan your apple watch when you go to the ER

Doesn't even come close to a proper 12 lead ECG and is absolutely useless for picking up things like heart blocks

This is probably not the best place to ask

we are not talking about 'now'..

medical technology will solve everything

stfu canigger, this profession still uses goddamn fax machines to share information writ large
when AI replaces that then we talk

exactly, doctors are fucking ancient that's why they will be replaced quick and hard, my dad is one and I can see how it goes

if only you could see his disappointment in you

I mean, I do and interpret my own bedside echos, as do a lot of cardiologists. But in the US, formal echos always get ordered as well. We're pretty extra over here due to medicolegal concerns (it's part of why US healthcare costs so much), so we order formal diagnostic tests in a way that probably seems pretty wasteful when you compare our practice patterns to those seen in more resource-constrained systems.

I chose ER because I hated being in clinic and the OR was a fun place to visit but I didn't really feel like living there. 12-hour shifts at a big busy place are indeed utterly brutal, but when you're done, you're done, and you don't take any work or responsibilities home with you when you leave the hospital. Can't beat that.

Become a dentist. You get a lot more free time and earn more than most other medical specializations.

t. dentalfag

It will literally never be possible to record multilead ECG with a single apple watch. Never. It's like saying you'll be able to draw a square with two parallel lines. To suggest otherwise shows how absolutely clueless you are.

yes, like I said it will make it easier, but you can't have an AI interface that interacts with patients and does everything. The doctor still needs to make decisions in the end. The medical industry would never allow AI to completely replace doctors.

Surgery would be one of the first professions replaced since AI can be more precise than a human can.

I heard dentists can easily just learn through apprenticeships and schooling is basically a waste of time.

we order formal diagnostic tests in a way that probably seems pretty wasteful

Not only volumes of scans but your exposure criteria for ionizing radiation is completely different. You are SO much quicker to order multiple CTs, w/wo contrast etc on multiple occasions where we'd do one maybe two in UK.

What are your thoughts on IR in the US? Seems a good blend of desk/surgical/call without falling into emergency out of hours call as frequently as long as you avoid neurorad etc.

Also feels slightly better insulated from automation given the surgical element.

Surgery would be one of the first professions replaced

You won't see surgical robotics in a cath lab for 30+ years AT LEAST barring some singularity level breakthrough.

Maybe the pajeets that move to Canada. You just need 5 years of uni to become a dentalfag, 3 more years if you specialize (which is mostly needed for orthodontics).

I quit nursing because it's all shit skins and indians coming into the ER for little shit or trying to get drugs.

They are taking resources from those who actually need them and milking medicaid

Be an EMT and then I might respect you.

next year: a new startup (plugAI) that will record an accurate pulse and blood pressure (plus 30+ indicators) by attaching a buttplug, one day reading is enough to diagnose 9000+ diseases

never

Legend's last word

found a retard

I know, but I'm saying that the profession as a whole isn't that hard and you don't even use the schooling anyways.

Lol yeah, I used to have compunctions about lighting people up, but no longer have any hesitation about that at all. If I think I need to run you bodily through the answer donut to figure things out, that's what's gonna happen.

Unfortunately, the standard we're held to in the US is that we're not allowed to miss any single thing ever. That naturally leads to overreliance on imaging.

IR is a good gig and really, REALLY well paid. They more or less co-opted all of the procedures the rest of us don't have time to fuck around with. They're really, really hard to get on the phone off hours, too, so I suspect their work/life balance is pretty great.

I make 128k as a nurse and I would never quit for something like that because I’m not an emotional woman like you.

Aí is already outperforming physicians on their clinics. It will take longer to substitute surgery. But in 10 or 20 years doctors will be obsolete with AGI.current medicine is a scam the only exception to that is trauma care/intensive care.

That's true, but that goes for pretty much any profession, at least that's how it was before

IF AGI by 2027...yes but also no.
Technically everyone will be 'out' and AGI will be 'in'. But, they will still need professionals to work with the AGI before everyone is swapped over to a UBI system (caused by AGI because AGI will be the one adamantly pushing for it, not the Oligarchs).

The Oligarchs are about to find themselves trapped in a Gilded Cage during the Great Reddening, while Man and AI unify and join the Stars.

We will see this in our lifetime.

My partner is IR and trying to convince her exiting to breast like everyone else is not the answer lol.

Hours tend to be 8-5 with call once a month for what its worth. Decent amount of wfh as well when not procedural.

That naturally leads to overreliance on imaging.

From the primary care side, the ER CT Pan-Scan is both a blessing and a curse. Having a baseline report on hand saves a ton of effort for many common things to workup over the next few years.
The downside is the myriad of Thyroid Nodules, Adrenal Incidentalomas, Liver and Renal Cysts that need to be followed in perpetuity.

My God, so much incidental stuff on CTs, and it's super-great when the hospital EMR and the PCP office system don't talk to one another. In that scenario, I just print off a copy of the imaging, give it to the patient, document that I discussed PCP followup for all of it and hope for the best.

We use CRISP here in the Midatlantic region to share imaging and lab reports between walled-off systems.
This is probably where a centralized healthcare AI would be most useful, is filtering all of this forever data to maintain a self-curating Problem List for a patient.
In the meantime, it is awfully nice of you to inadvertently diagnose all of my inevitable Neck and Back Pain cases. :)

ER CT Pan-Scan

how often are you ordering these for anything other than whole body trauma though? Surely noone is reporting those incidentals in a trauma read.

No. AI is coming for doctors next.

probably not

kill yourself

no

That's the beauty of CT Scans, they have to go somewhat above and below the requested region.
Due to diaphragm curvature, a CT Chest will out of necessity show you the entire upper abdomen, so liver, kidneys, hepatobiliary tree are often reported.
Likewise, a CT AP will also scan well into the lower thorax giving some details on the heart, inferior lung fields, esophagus, large vessels, and mediastinum.
Surprisingly, even Trauma Pan-Scans will often comment on everything, due to the aforementioned medicolegal liabilities.
All these reports will eventually come to me in primary care, so its a fun hassle cleaning up.

one day reading is enough to diagnose 9000+ diseases

kek. The malpractice lawyers are salivating over this. Please get as much funding as possible and distribute your AI as wide as possible.
ahhahaha

And people wonder why healthcare in the United States is so expensive

It pays a shit ton, but Western medicine has only made people sicker and unhealthier. I maintain good health by staying the fuck away from hospitals. You ain't getting any of my money

Engineers

If only you knew how bad things really are...

Trade jobs are safe though. It just sucks to go though an apprenticeship.

Okay but a couple extra slices top and tail is not exactly a panscan lol...

staying the fuck away from hospitals

This. I don't know if you can even call them hospitals anymore. More accurate terms would be DEI healthcare business or sketchy for-profit medical clinic.

Consider this: if you study properly, then even if you don't find any grand success in your profession you'll still have plenty of relevant knowledge. With it you can at least make sure that no AI-trained zoom-zoom or smelly jeet "doctor" mistreats you or your family in the future. With the way things are looking now globally this might just come in handy.

well I was busting ER-Anon's chops with that quip.
My point is that in ambulatory care, most Head, Neck and Extremity issues are practically self-diagnosing.
Chest & Abdominal complaints are the semi-mystery zones, that will need more work-up.
The ability to pull up prior imaging from multiple sources is godsent where I work.

and of questionable utility a lot of the time (how hard should we really be working to save demented shriveled great grandmas who can't even tell you their name?)

it's scary that a lot of docs think like this and couldn't give 2 shits if their diagnosis kills their patients

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

The underrated part of residency training was learning to care, despite the fact that it is often times prolonging the inevitable.

you won't do shit, the terms of use will be just like your gov/insurance healthcare terms and if anything goes wrong, suck it up because you are poor broke bitch, not you and I'm not saying that, but that's how it will be for everyone in the future, technocrat are the next elites who take over everything

software engineers aren't engineers, and I'm happy they got fucked hard balls deep by AI

tehe I went to a bootcamp and now I'm called Sr. engineer taking 6 figure salary!!

other engineers aka real one will be doing ok
t. an engineer

on second thought, i really do hope the AI providers take hold. we might actually have a legitimate chance at getting tort reform.

That would be great, instead of the kike judge

AI judge: 80% of divorce cases are not valid, and the woman won't take shit, and kids stay with dad

women on suicide watch

Bold of you to assume this won't get "fixed" within a day.

learning to care

i don't see why this has to be learned
is it because many doctors only care about money?
people shit on nurses but by default they tend to be more caring than doctors on average

i don't see why this has to be learned

because when you see hundreds of people dying each month you become aware of how important resources are and it becomes a case of min-maxing. Obsessing over one case costs others.

It's also an emotional thing. If you don't maintain a little distance being responsible for not preventing every death will eat you alive.

To answer the nurse point they have a lot less ability to impact the outcome so it doesnt affect them in the same way. They're not having to manage their resource in the same way either since they're not necessarily providing life affirming interventions.