Thursday, August 28, 2008

Top 5 MD Myths, Busted.



If you regularly read The New York Times or listen to NPR, you probably believe the following:

1. Doctors are rich.
The most common specialties – e.g. internal medicine, pediatrics – make, on average, after 5 years of practice, $170,000. “Not bad!”, you say. Now, remember, Mr. Wizard: you are 300,000$ in debt from med. school; you made sub-minimum wage for 4 years in residency; you made probably less than 100,000$ in your first five years of practice considering “partner buy-in” and being “junior” in your group; you likely employ 1-2 staff per physician (secretary, nurse etc.) on your dime; you are in the highest tax bracket, so ~50% of that 170k goes to federal, state, social security, medicare etc.; and worst of all, you are almost 40 years old when you start pulling a good paycheck.

Now, do you think doctors are “rich”? Well, if you still do, go fuck yourself... and film it for me.

2. Doctors are overpaid.
First, compare physician salaries (considering what I said above) with almost any other professional job (law, business etc.) and this is obviously untrue. Second, every doctor I know does, minimally, 10’s of thousands of dollars of charity work (free care) every year. This work is NOT tax deductible, making it a “double-whammy” financially (when I do free care I give up the opportunity to do something I am paid for).

Now, do you think doctors are “overpaid”? Well, if you still do, eat my ass, and don’t forget the reach-around.

3. Doctors play golf on Wednesday afternoons.
Joining a Country Club costs 50-100,000$ and has average annual fees of about 5-10,000$. Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t shit diamonds. And on top of that, I fucking WORK on Wednesdays so I can pay my fucking staff!

Now, do you think doctors “golf on Wednesdays”? Well, if you still do, gargle my ball-sack with a shot of peppermint Scope.

4. Doctors have a God-Complex.
Sure, a few doctors are douchebags and think they are the second-coming, but certainly no more than any other group in a position of authority. Docs are severely self-critical and are always trying to improve. Every single doc I know got into this field to “help people” and “do something that makes a real difference”. A telling quote I heard on the radio the other day by a physician was, “Do not practice medicine if you cannot handle being humbled every single day”. Doctors in general are very aware of their limitations, and if not, quickly end up being fired.

Now, Freud, do you think doctors “have a God-Complex”? Well, if you still do, you are welcome to play some Mozart on my Magic Skin-Zauberflöte.

5. Doctors have potty-mouths.

OK. This may be true.

33 comments:

  1. I love mythbusters and I also love doctors with potty-mouths.

    My doctors each have called me at crazy late hours and are still at the office tying up loose ends. There isn't enough money in the world to compensate them for that.

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  2. Oh and, by the way, all of us guy docs on here are pretty damn hot.

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  3. I think everyone on the internet is hot, aren't they? That is what everyone tells me.

    You specified the guy doctors...what about QuiXXote?

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  4. wow.

    I didn't learn anything watching General Hospital.

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  5. E* you are the shit. I'd work in your lab anyday. Plus you're funny. All my paths were old and stodgy. And none of them had potty mouths or a sense of humor. They were good guys but boring.

    And Radgirl, you're right. I come to the net specifically to be hot.

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  6. Surprised you left out the one about Doctors and private jets. Speaking of Mythbusters, do you think the Airplane on the Treadmill really took off? I think it did, but my dad the Retired B-52 Pilot says it was faked..

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  7. Hah. It might make the work situation a bit uncomfortable if Lofty called QuiXXote hot since they work together.

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  8. Let me give you the straight-up scoop.

    Quixxote is a former medical school classmate and she is FINE!

    If she wasn't married to a good friend I would say she was SMOKING HOT. A YUMMY MUMMY.

    Lofty

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  9. $350,000 House? Mrs. Drackman spends that much on Shoes. Well not all at once, but over the years it adds up. I remember once in Med School not bein able to use my ATM card cause I only had $19 in my account. It'd be a great story except for the Low Interest Student Loan that I wasted on Beer and a Motorcycle.

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  10. Begs the question - Why do you do it then?

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  11. nh,
    no quetion is begged. we do it because we want to be doctors and care for people. personally speaking, just as eto' said in his post, i went into medicine because it was the best thing i thought i could do for both myself and my fellow man. i also did it because, while very few of us practicing physicians 'get rich' doing what we do, we also do not go hungry and make what is, to most folks, a lot of money. i am not complaining about the money i make, i'm complaining about how hard i have to work to make it. if we were in anything that resembled a market economy in medicine i would be in a 1.5 million house etc...

    the reason i'm leaving, and what i did not see coming, was the growth of the entitlement mentality to the point that those who can least afford the care i'm giving them are the MOST demanding and unpleasant.

    add to this the incredibly idiotic oversight from people who do not practice medicine, the endless rules and regulations, the nit picky focus on stuff that has no impact on patient care, and working within our system now is the polar opposite of what i thought it would be. with MD behind my name, four years of medical school, four years of residency, and a board certification, i am, all of a sudden, dispensible.

    well, i'll beat them to the punch, and, if enough of my colleagues follow suit then the folks that will suffer the most are the very ones the idiotic unfunded mandate called EMTALA was designed to protect. but then again, what did they think was going to happen?

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  12. I thought guys went into medicine so they could pick up nurses. Yeah, we’re hot, and that "MD" behind your name is a real babe magnet.

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  13. "Quixxote is a former medical school classmate and she is FINE!"

    Awesome Lofty! I haven't heard it put that way since High School.

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  14. Dear Mother Jones,
    Yes and yes.

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  15. "Zauberflote"!? Anyone? These are pearls before swine people!

    And for all the ladies out there: I'm very hot, dong-wise.

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  16. Pure poetry. Right down to the last potty-mouthed diatribe.

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  17. This was simply amazing. You have such talent.


    And E., you know how important a "hot dong" is to women. Does that mean we'd have to put a bag over your head though?

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  18. yeah E^, I was going to make a comment about pearls and such, but I wont.

    Dude, you look like Gollum. How do you get anybody near your Zauberflote?

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  19. you are welcome to play some Mozart on my Magic Skin-Zauberflöte.

    Beethoven as well?

    5. Doctors have potty-mouths.


    OK. This may be true.

    hahaha I am not in the healthcare profession (but I love someone who is!).

    You people scare me.
    lol
    And God bless every one of you.

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  20. Quite possibly the funniest post I've seen in months.

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  21. GENIUS post!

    How did I miss the convo about my appearance? Darlin', I'm what they call in the medical terms "hottie fine foxy lady". OK, maybe that's Myth #6...

    QuiXX

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  22. This is truly art!
    Thank you for posting this. I am glad someone has so eloquently expressed the true nature of becoming a physician and undergoing the grueling countless years of post graduate training to try to make ends meet and help people in the process.

    Cheers and keep up the great work.

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  23. Dude, you fuckin' doctors act like you're the only ones with student debt.

    My best friend is $50,000 in debt. She's going to be a teacher; that is, making around $35,000 plus paying off her student loans for the rest of her life.

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  24. fucking A! lithium would be awesome.

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  25. no, no, no! i'm at work and i was just thinking that the song 'lithium' by nirvanna would be awesome right now.

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  26. Tscch. You're totally too old for that! Geez. You might as well find your walker and a stick a catheter in your self.

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  27. Psfffff, I love ya'all.

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  28. I'm a nurse...my mom wanted me marry a doc...I'm like "Why?"....they are never home......always at work or on call...

    I love being a nurse...there is not enough money on the planet to make me want to be a doctor...the hours SUCK!!! and the pay is not too great when it is broken down like you did so well...and that's not even mentioning insurance so when the nerds and no-paying sob's who haven't even paid you take you to court....!

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  29. SOME doctor are rich (many plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons, and old school specialists who built their practises in the 1970's), but like you said, unless they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, the young guys ain't rich. That is until they leave medicine and work for an investment bank.

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  30. But you guys get to snake tubes up people's noses, and put stethoscopes that have been dippped in ice water against people's skin. That right there is worth eight years of higher ed, low wages, long hours and malpractice threats.

    Stop whining.

    :-)

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  31. I just want to know if you kiss your mother with that mouth :)

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  32. No one will miss you.

    You're nasty, hate your patients, and so think that every situation is a repeat of yesterday that based on your blog you are incapable of diagnosing anyone -- especially if you hate them. Since you hate just about everyone, there ya go.

    Please, please, I hope your next career is selling shoes -- only, please, not childrens' shoes. The kid crying that his feet hurt, you're probably not going to actually measure his feet, because you've figured him for a spoiled brat, and all.

    Have to say you're one of the biggest assholes in med-blog-land, and that's saying a lot, especially between the big, fat nurses posting about their abdominal surgery to lose weight while criticizing their overweight patients and the shrill doctors bitching about the parents who are taking good care of their children except when they're bitching about the parents who aren't.

    Go to hell.

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