<p>Hello all! I am currently a Freshman at USF who has one question to ask any and all about the medical field. My parents are pushing me to become a doctor because they want me to live better lives than they have. While I wholeheartedly agree with them I am still unsure about several things. After running a few calculations and researching about the possible fields of study with friends and advisers I discovered that being a doctor means devoting ones entire life to medicine and probably nothing else. I know some students have the ability to become doctors but do not realize the many things that go into becoming a doctor. I understand that the path in the medical will be trying and I am fine with that. I will go any length to make my parents happy. However, I want to, how to say, "have a life." My friend's father who is a family doctor does make quite a lot but most goes to student loans that he has yet to pay off in his 40s. He is almost always out working and is on call. I then talked with a retired pharmacist and asked him how his life was. Once again, he told me that the medical field was tough and that a pharmacist does not make as much as a specialized doctor does. He does say that he has lived a very fulfilling life and has had time to spend time with his friends and himself. He lives a rather modest life, better than most but not as good as a doctor. He told me that if I wanted a good job without the headaches, being a pharmacist was the way to go.</p>
<p>I am not worried about making lots of money as many doctors aspire to do. All I want is a job that will give me a decent living with the gratifying feeling of helping someone in need. In the end, I just want to make my parents happy with my decisions and not make myself out as a failure. So I would like opinions from students, doctors, etc. about this subject. Is it better to run the doctoral path or is it better to run the pharmacist path? Also, how will future changes in the medical field affect doctors and such. I've read and heard that doctors fear the new changes that the government wants to enact which they say will ruin their careers.</p>
<p>I told my doctor I might want to be a doctor, and she told me to be a pharmacist.</p>
<p>Pharmacists make a decent living, even if it is less than a specialized doctor. You also have to consider what you really want out of a career though, and what branch of pharmacy you’d be considering. If you want to help people in need, I think being a doctor would be more likely to give you that feeling than being a pharmacist, but that if not to say you wouldn’t get that feeling from being a pharmacist, either.</p>
<p>However, I’m not a doctor or a pharmacist. Just a fellow student who has also contemplated this decision. Ultimately, I decided I couldn’t be either. I wasn’t committed to the idea of being a doctor enough for me to be willing to endure medical school, and I ended up discovering that I really hate chem. So, pharmacy school became out of the question.</p>
<p>I was also turned off through discussion with my friends and family. My family always wanted me to be a family doctor. Good money, but without the stress of working in a hospital. They did, however, support my brief interest in pharmacy, but then my friend’s mother lamented to me about how she was unhappy with her job. I want to do something exciting, where I come across new things every day, and careers in retail pharmacy (CVS, Walgreens, etc.) can become tedious.</p>
<p>Based on your post, I would say just go with pharmacy. Still, because you don’t seem especially committed to either, I think you should be open to new career paths, in case you find a passion elsewhere. I ended up finding biomedical engineering, and I’m excited to get into it. Good luck!</p>
<p>In family practice, to make enough money to pay off the med school loans requires a huge patient load. Average appointment times are down to 7 minutes; the new EMR software is cumbersome and time consuming. In our suburban area, pay would be in the $130k range average, up to about $250k for the busiest ones. Burnout is high. Family practice internships are going unfilled as specialized medicine has much higher ROI. There will be a need, however, especially with 2014 healthcare changes, for primary care. You can get loan forgiveness for going to an underserved area.</p>
<p>New pharmacists, when hired by one of the big retailers, don’t have it much better - last choice in scheduling, very busy, on their feet all day.</p>