I get asked this

[dc]

Every so often, someone will ask me if I don't want to go back to my old job, if I don't miss it. Leaving aside that that isn't an option anyway, since I simply don't have the physical stamina to even consider doing a fraction of what I used to (I can put in a lot of effort for a defined, limited period, as with a con or something like that: not as a continuing, open-ended commitment)...

Of course I miss it. On the one hand, it was a fascinating job, and on the other you got to help people directly, occasionally even saving their lives. Even if I could do it now, though, I wouldn't. Here is an account of some of the reasons why. I could see it was going that way fifteen years ago.

Comments

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

...just not in medicine for some reason

One reason there could well be the very high level of litigation in the USA.

I know a lot of people do go to the USA, but I was just pointing out it is not universally seen as overwhelmingly desirable. There are lots of reasons for that, some of them just that it's a foreign country.

actual disposable income at different income levels tends to feel much the same in the two countries. The tax structures are different, and the necessities one has to (or feels one has to) pay for are different, but it feels much the same in terms of financial comfort or strain. And people who can afford not just two cars but a non-employed spouse or alternatively paid daycare tend to forget others can't . . . you know? Physicians tend to be at that level of comfort in both countries

Except at the top of the tree, that really isn't the case in the UK. I can think of hardly any doctor I knew in the UK whose spouse was not also working, because they needed to both be working to have a reasonable standard of living. Also, I have worked with US doctors, too, and they did have more disposable income and were used to it.

There is some truth in the long hours statement, although there isa difference between long and crippling. Also, long hours in the 1950s and 60s was one thing; long hours in the 2000s is something else, it is much more demanding.