Month: February 2021

$200,000 MD/DO: is becoming a doctor worth it FINANCIALLY?

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

Introduction

Back in May 2015, I wrote a blog entry entitled, “Don’t go into medicine for the money” where I crunch some numbers to counter the claim that doctors are all part of the 1%. Sure, there are doctors that are doing really well out there. And yes, the salary of a doctor out of residency is quite nice. But these things do not take into account the current status of crippling debt that many medical students take on. Becoming a doctor is a challenging road, especially if an individual is coming from a lower socioeconomic status which requires taking on more and more debt. Furthermore, doctors just don’t get a lot of education on managing finances, even when the average medical student graduate has OVER $200,000 IN DEBT.

Anyway, I decided to revisit this question of whether becoming a doctor is worth it financially and make a YouTube video on it. This time, I made different assumptions… specifically, I decided to look at whether I’m better off financially as a physician rather than an engineer. For those of you that are just getting to know me, I graduated with my Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. All of my friends went off to start their engineering jobs with real salaries and the ability to start saving money for life things – a car, a house, vacations, retirement – while I went off to medical school and residency and saved barely any money while also working ridiculous hours, exposing myself to occupational hazards [let’s not forget that I was an ICU fellow at the peak of our COVID surge and continue to care for COVID patients to this day], and letting the “best years of my life” go to waste.

Here’s the spreadsheet to check out my assumptions and conclusions: http://bit.ly/doctorfinances.

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NIGHT SHIFT | A glimpse into a night shift as an ICU doctor

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

Here’s a video with my thoughts on night shift and a glimpse into a night with me. Make sure you’ve already watched my day in the life video for what day shift looks like!

Introduction

Night shift is a different beast altogether. My shifts are 14 hours long – technically I’m on service from 1700 – 0700, but there is a lot of preparation that goes into this shift. I spend hours prior to going into the hospital looking over my patients and sometimes pre-writing my notes in order to get a good understanding of what happened during the course of the patient’s ICU stay. Maybe it’s because I’m a new attending, but I also feel like if I get to know my patients better, they receive better care.

Anyway, in my video, I go over some of my strong feelings surrounding how tough working night shifts can be on the body as well as take you with me on a shift for you to get a glimpse into what a night shift in the ICU looks like for an attending.

Keep reading if you want to see an hourly breakdown of what my night shift schedule looks like.

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Specialty series: anesthesiology

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

Back in 2015, I had grand plans to write up entries discussing different specialties and my personal thoughts on why they were not quite a good fit for me but how I could see they could be a good fit for others. I only wrote up one entry on emergency medicine. But it’s never too late to keep adding to it, right?!

A lot of premeds and medical students have asked me about my journey and path to anesthesiology and I finally took the time to record a video outlining my journey AND threw in some fun throwback photos from over a decade ago, when I was in college! I hope you’ll take the time to watch the video above, if you haven’t already.

If you’re interested in reading more about what I like and do not like about the field of anesthesiology, keep reading!

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