I’d be interested to know if/how life has changed for you (or your DD/DS, etc) since becoming a doctor.
I’m thinking about how others see you/treat you now that you’re a doctor. Do you worry about life as a doctor in a litigious society—Do you worry about getting sued just because you’re a doctor? (Background: BFF was advised to remove her newly-graduated physician son from her auto insurance policy because she would then be vulnerable to litigation should he have an accident in her car.) Has being a doctor opened unexpected doors for you?
It seems the profession is so highly respected, people often have unrealistic expectations of doctors unrelated to their profession. Curious what others have seen/experienced.
As for what I’ve done–my kidlets were off my auto insurance once they got their own cars in college. (Off my phone plan too.)
All 3 of us have completely separate finances–and it’s been that way for a while. I did, however, place D1’s & D2’s inheritance from their grandfather in a trust so it can’t be considered an asset in case of a divorce or other litigation. (The estate lawyer was worth every penny I paid him…)
Big difference for us, as we supported D. all thru medical school, including paying her tuition. She is on her own now and is able to support herself financially on a small resident salary which is called “stipend”. I am not sure about the car insurance policy, but she has been driving her own car since the age of 18, so as far as our liability, we have not been liable for about 8 years now as we do not own her car, it has been on her name.
S’s car is titled in his name, has own insurance since med school. S’s finances are separate from ours. As to BFF, I’m not sure if newly graduated physician would be covered under family insurance as policy might have language that states if parents can’t claim kid as dependent on fed tax return, the kid cannot be covered on family plan.
Issue of being sued hasn’t come up with S. IMO as it costs a lot of money upfront on part of attorneys to bring a malpractice suit, with insurance companies being aggressive with defending suits, with a lot of practitioners requiring people to go arbitration route and with noneconomic damages (pain and suffering) being capped at 250K here in CA, it has lessened litigation and/or tended to bring in faster settlements covered by most practitioners malpractice coverage. If anything, the concern is not to get sued for some intentional act (eg fraud (changing a patient’s record), intentionally harming someone) as then malpractice won’t protect you as malpractice covers negligence, not intentional actions.
[ul]
[]I wear my glasses a lot more often than when I was in med school. I used to just pop my contacts in and out all the time (I can’t stand sleeping in my contacts), even on call…
[] I drink way more diet mountain dew than I used to
[] Once I got into my fellowship - pediatric critical care (I take care of kids in the ICU) - I cut down on telling people what I do A LOT. People don’t like to think about critically ill/injured kids or kids dying. You can only take so much of new people responding with “wow, I could never do that” or “it must take a special type of person to do that job” or random “thank you for what you do” type comments before it gets tiring. I usually just say, “oh I work at ** Children’s Hospital” or “I’m a pediatrician” and only expand if pressed
[] People expect you to diagnose everything for them. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, in-laws. All sorts of questions that fall well outside my expertise. Or if anyone is having stuff go on at the hospital, they want you to look it over or explain what’s happening
[] laypeople and random customer service people will give you more respect or deference when they know you’re a doctor…I see this most often with the airlines where some gate agents and flight attendents make a big show out of calling me Dr. BigRedMed. Occasionally it happens to home service type of things - my contractor changed his attitude on a dime when he realized what I do.
[li] I get a lot of phone calls from recruiters that don’t understand what my field is, even though their job is to talk to doctors all day. I get a lot of offers for pediatric urgent care, pediatric emergency medicine positions and adult ICU spots that aren’t at all my skill set.[/li]
There’s probably more, but that’s a good list for now[/ul]
I haven’t felt at greater risk of being sued for anything, but I’m also generally not paranoid about such things.
When Dh and I were in grad school, we had a number of friends who were dual PhD couples. One of our friends had just gotten married and she her new hubby were on their honeymoon at a B&B on the New England coast. Most of the physics grad students/postdocs were pretty laid back and held to the Bell Lab attitude regarding titles (as in, “We’re all PhDs here. If we spend all out time calling each other Doctor, we’ll never get any work done.”) But DH’s classmate’s new husband (who was somewhat older than us and not from the US) was old school & very formal; he’d trained at a top European university and was a faculty member at very prestigious international program. He aways used the title “Doctor” when introducing himself and expected to be addressed as such. He’d made their reservations at the B&B under the name “Doctor and Mrs. Newlywed”. The second afternoon on their honeymoon, Dr. Newlywed was sitting on the porch of the B&B waiting for his wife when he was approached by an older lady who introduced herself. Dr. Newlywed nodded and reciprocated by introducing himself as “Dr. Newlywed”. The woman then proceeded to give him a rundown of all her symptoms, detailing every little ache and pain until she finally ran out of complaints. She looked at him expectantly for a diagnosis, but Dr. Newlywed only nodded gravely and answered, “That is all very interesting, but I am a Doctor of Mathematics”.