Survey shows best, worst paid doctors -- and many regrets
The lowest paid are the ones that regularly treat most patients--paediatricians, family practice doctors, internists, even endocrinologists (in a rising tide of diabetes) and psychiatrists (because mental illness always gets the shaft when it comes to health care).
I spent a total of 16 years in college, have enough student loans to have bought a very nice house, and have largely been underemployed during my career, meaning the debt has loomed over me and so forth. Do I regret my schooling? No. Would I have gotten in and gotten out more quickly if I'd been wiser in my youth? Yes. But you know what...I love what I do, and my stress levels as a librarian are nothing compared with people whose decisions regularly determine the possible life and death of their patients. My stress comes from my other job, where I deal with insurance companies' phone systems and things like that--and I deal with them only a bit compared to a doctor and his staff. You could not pay me to be a doctor, to invest that much time and money and debt into a job where all day I dealt with red tape, not in our current health care environment. In my opinion, our health care system is broken, and I don't think it's going to be fixed any time soon. I have great respect for many men and women who continue to go in and put that white coat on in a personal mission of making things better for others.
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