Money, respect and impact

Image credit: Hugh MacLeod

Those are the 3 “biggies” used to drive us into a career in Medicine.

Doctors make a lot of money. Doctors receive a lot of respect. Doctors make a huge impact on the world.

But under the microscope lenses of “personal experience” and “reality”, these 3 USPs aren’t as brilliant as they seem at first glance.

Doctors don’t get as much money as you think they do…when you divide what they earn by the crazy number of hours that they work.

Doctors are respected by some of the patients they treat. But they do not get respect from the Health care Factory that treats them as the dispensible, replaceable cogs that it trained them to be.

And whilst Doctors work really hard to make a difference in the lives of their patients, the impact their work has on the global canvas of health care is about zero percent.

That is, unless they develop an innovation like the Polio vaccine or a breakthrough in Human genomic that can scale independent of their continual efforts…something that most Doctors will neverdo because they aren’t given enough time, energy or encouragement to make meaningful breakthroughs in their fields of interest.

Also under the microscope, we see that the Money, Respect and Impact offered by a career in Medicine, come attached with a huge price tag:

Your personal happiness and well-being.

You have as much right to these as the patients you’re being trained to serve…don’t you think?

This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.

120,000 hours

Image credit: Hugh MacLeod

80,000 hours.

That’s the total number of hours that a person will spend working a 9 to 5 job, 50 weeks a year (2 weeks of annual vacation) over the course of a 40-year career.

40 hrs/wk × 50 wk/yrs × 40 yrs = 80,000hrs

And if you’re a Doctor working an average of 60 hours/week, this number goes up to 120,000hrs.

120,000hrs.

That’s the number you’ve got to work with.

And when you’ve used up your 120,000 hours as a Doctor, what will you have to show for it?

Show me the money

From a money perspective, the average Doctor earns about $90 for every hour they work:

$90/hour × 120,000 hours = $10,800,000

(Total amount earned over the course of 40 years trading time for money).

Broken down, this $10,800,000 is the equivalent of:

  • $90/hour
  • $5,400/week
  • $21,600/month
  • $259,200/year

And at the upper end of the pay scale, with Neurosurgeons earning about $398/hour:

$398/hour × 120,000 hours = $47,760,000

Broken down, this $47,760,000 is the equivalent of:

  • $398/hour
  • $23,880/week
  • $95,520/month
  • $1,146,240/year

Touching lives

From a patient perspective…the number of lives you can personally touch ovet a 40 year career as a Doctor…what does that look like?

Of course, this varies depending on your area of specialty.

But assuming 15-minutes per patient, then each hour you spend working will touch 4 lives.

120,000 hours × 4 = 480,000 patients

So in a best case scenario, you have the potential to touch almost half a million lives as a Doctor.

But that’s not the full picture.

In reality, you will only spend about half your time (52.9%) actually seeing patients. The rest of your time will be spent doing paperwork and administrative tasks.

So your 120,000 hours of patient time is more like 60,000 hours.

And the number of lives you can personally impact is:

60,000 hr × 4 patients/hr = 240,000 patients

So after 40 years of toiling away as a Doctor, you will potentially have impacted almost a quarter of a million people.

But sadly, that’s still not the full picture.

For one thing, we’re assuming that each patient you treat will only see you once in their life time. In reality though, each patient will visit you about 3 times per year.

So when you factor this in, the total number of lives you can impact is:

240,000 patients ÷ 3 = 80,000 patients

(About 2,000 patients a year)

And when you factor in the global death rate of about 7 per 1,000 people…you will lose about 560 of those patients over the course of 40 years.

But excluding the death rate, the total number of lives you will potentially touch over the course of 40 years is about 80,000 people.

40 years to touch 80,000 people.

40 years of battling beauraucracy, filling out paperwork, reacting to whatever your patients bring through the door, fighting fires, fishing the same 80,000 patients out of the river…

Meanwhile.

Mark writes some code in his dorm room and launches Facebook…touching over 1.86 billion people every month in less than 13 years after starting.

Blake starts TOMS shoes and gives away 10 million pairs of shoes to needy children around the world in just 7 years.

Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin decide to figure out a vaccine for the Polio virus and effectively eradicated the disease from the entire planet, and are continually touching the lives of billions of people every year.

Peter Pronovost decides to spend a few minutes writing out a simple 5-step checklist and instantly saved 1,500 lives.

The point is that if you’re goal is to make money while changing lives…there are more ways to do that beyond just going to medical school and becoming a Doctor.

And those ways don’t need you to spend 40 years doing something you mostly hate or are frustrated by.

How do you want to spend your next 120,000 hours?

This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.

8 myths about Medical school (and becoming a Doctor)

Image credit: Hugh MacLeod
  1. Doctors make more money than Dog walkers
  2. Respect and high-esteem from all your patients
  3. Always have a job
  4. Spend your life making a difference
  5. You can be a Doctor and follow your true passion at the same time
  6. Borrow the money…you’ll be able to pay it back easily once you qualify
  7. Being trained to help patients…it’s not just 40 years of managing disease
  8. Medical school is committed to bringing out the best in you

Good news #1: You weren’t wrong to believe these lies; you were just lied to by those you trusted…as they were by those that they trusted. Like the investors Bernie Madoff conned out of $65 billion.

Good news #2: Once you realise you were lied to, you’re free to make different decisions and choices based on what you actually want, and on what’s actually true.

This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.