I love it when my paycheck gets wiped out by car trouble and pet expenses despite working 13-14 hours six days a week

Hi everyone, I’m a medical student interested in neurointerventional medicine and trying to understand how the neurology, neurosurgery, and radiology pathways compare in practice.
I’m particularly interested in pursuing it through neurology and would appreciate insight into a few questions:
Job market: How is demand currently for interventional neurologists compared with neurosurgery- or radiology-trained neurointerventionalists? Does residency background affect hiring, practice opportunities, or geographic flexibility?
Compensation: For similar procedural workloads and call responsibilities, are there meaningful salary differences based on training background?
Call and lifestyle: How do call frequency, overnight procedures, work hours, and schedule predictability compare? How much depends on specialty versus group size and practice setting?
Practice mix: Outside of procedures, what does each pathway’s typical week look like? For those trained in neurology, how much time goes toward stroke service, general neurology, or clinic?
Future outlook: Over the next 5–10 years, do you expect demand to grow, or are there concerns about saturation and competition among the different pathways?

Lastly, For someone who enjoys neurology and endovascular procedures, is this still a worthwhile route? Are there limitations or tradeoffs you wish you had understood before committing?b

Hey all, hope this doesn’t count as a personal
agenda, if so obviously delete.

I am now an attending but found a job that gives me great work-life balance and job satisfaction that I would have never thought about had someone not told me, so I am telling you.

If you are FM or IM and want to practice outpatient but not get burnt out with 97,309 patients on your panel, consider providing non-psychiatric medical care at a state psychiatric hospital. These patients are usually there quite long-term, sometimes for years, so you end up functioning as their PCP while they are admitted.

I am in the midwest and work for one such hospital. I work M-F 8-4:30, never have to take call or work weekends, and get lots of paid holidays and great benefits. I also find it incredibly fulfilling, although I realize it is not for everyone.

Feel free to DM me if you want more info.

Hot take I know, but with the job market in shambles, and certain specialties booming or staying the same, we have it better than most

​

I’m working 80+ hours a week in residency, and I’m curious how this compares with other places, specialties and careers.

Recently, I told some of my non-medical friends about my work hours, and they were genuinely surprised. It made me think about work-life balance and the choices I want to make for my future career.

How many hours do you typically work per week? Does it get better after residency?

I know we joke around and commiserate about it, but has anyone been actually diagnosed with PTSD from their experiences as a resident?

I did a few years of surgery, and the whole experience was brutally traumatic for me. Not just the toxic residency itself, but also major issues in my personal life involving infidelity and domestic abuse. 4 years of yelling, crying in bathrooms, humiliation, physical exhaustion, substance abuse, emotional abuse, instability, lack of sleep, social isolation, etc. That time was just a total nightmare and did severe damage to my mental and physical health.

I've since changed specialties (OEM now!) and live in a completely new environment. Surrounded by nature (there are literal deer on my front lawn). Very low stress, amazing work-life balance. I have time and energy to take care of myself, to spend with my loved ones, for hobbies. I have a loving and supportive partner. I'm even slowly but surely enjoying seeing patients and going in to work again.

I feel better, but I still don't feel right. My biggest issue is that my stress response to certain situations is often excessive and inappropriate. It's like my body relives a similar situation back in surgical residency, and it just reacts negatively. It just feels so out of place and unnecessary in this new environment.

The other day I opened up to some friends about how I'm afraid to "make moves" in my new field and my struggles overcoming that. I'm just so risk averse with my career now, because I don't want to experience anything remotely close to what I experienced ever again.

A friend of mine made a joke the other day about PTSD. I knew I was recovering from burnout, but I never really thought about actual PTSD. I looked up the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, and I was like, damn lol -- maybe I do have this problem.

Anyway, just wanted to see if anyone else out there feels me.

Edit - And yeah I should talk to a therapist again at some point. My plan was to see how things go in a completely new environment first, give things a chance to heal and adjust.

With due respect to both specialties, I’m trying to decide between MD Emergency Medicine and MD Anaesthesia. I’d really appreciate honest opinions from doctors in these fields about job satisfaction, work-life balance, stress levels and long-term career fulfilment. If you could choose again, would you still choose the same specialty? Thank you!

Hi all,

I'm a final-year medical student in Europe and I've been yo-yoing about my specialty for weeks. My judgment feels clouded: I'm fairly sure I have ADHD, I'm burnt out, and I'm about to start SSRIs, mainly for anxiety.

I was/am torn between certain specialities:

\-Ophthalmology: the only specialty where I genuinely find the anatomy, pathophysiology and the physics/optics interesting. I've always loved the eye. But I'm unsure about surgery, and about whether I have the energy for a tough residency (late finishes, lots of studying, steep learning curve). People call it easy, but it isn't.

\-Occupational medicine (médecin du travail): I haven't done a placement yet, but the residency and lifestyle seem much better suited to me.

\-PM&R: I spent one day with a doctor who didn't seem passionate, and it put me off.

\-Dentistry: I've even thought about finishing this year and then doing 5 years of dentistry.

What I want: a 9-to-5 but also feel passionate about what I do, and feel like I'm making differences in people's lives (ophthalmology does certainly provide that) and some relaxation, at least for now.

I genuinely love people, talking to them and I find I truly do have a strong capacity to make a patient feel heard and reassured which is already part of the healing process in my options ... I'm a type B person, not a gunner. I've already struggled too much in med school as a last minute studier/heavy procrastinator, I'm not passionate about much else in medicine, and I don't want the responsibility of vast medical knowledge. At 26, I want to get on with life instead of staying in the rat race.

My questions are:

\-is my hesitation about ophthalmology just burnout, or should I genuinely avoid this specialty...Is my personality (type B) just not made for Opthalmology ? I genuinely don't care about making tons of money, I want to be passionate and fulfilled with my job whilst feeling like I'm making genuine differences in people's lives, all whilst the job not being my entire life (I want a family, to reconnect with friends to live)...

Can I realistically handle a demanding residency for several years while burnt out, has anyone managed?

Does attending life get much better, and is it worth it? Or will I be surrounded by type A people forever?

Would love to hear from anyone who's been through something similar.

In that case should I just go for the safer, more 'boring' option which is occupational health medicine, which is stable, 9-5 even in residency, no calls etc.

Thank you guys for your suggestions and time,

Have a nice day!

I'm an anesthesiology resident at a surgical icu and the surgery colleagues make one feel like a useless bug. It's not the questions that bother me but how they are asked and the complete lack of trust in our abilities and diagnostic workups. You are brought upon a hostile group of people after not sleeping for 24h and are not even allowed to speak your sentence to the end. Like let me speak I can answer all your questions for fuck's sake but stop interrupting me in a very humiliating tone. It completely lacks the minimum respect that should be in place in every human interaction.

Back to things I can change hopefully:

When this happens I get nervous and feel like I'm being examined so despite having done perfectly all night I can't present anything logically i get a shaky cracky voice and get red probably. I need advice to overcome this.

I already bought a board review course last year and now I’m struggling to find ways to spend the rest of my CME money. There’s only so much study material a person can buy!

Any underrated purchases or things where I can use this money? I am not going for any conference.

I need to use this money before it mysteriously disappears into the hospital’s general fund. 😂💀

If you have a chance to do an administrative duties in addition to patient care as a physician. What’s the pros and cons?

I know what the outpatient diabetes management looks like but curious about inpatient as I know they often have an inpatient diabates team they reach out to for consults.

I start in a week and I'm so scared. I don't know what essentials to buy and also scared for the hectic work. I prayed for this but now I'm scared 😭😭😭

I’m starting to genuinely hate residency, and I can’t tell if it’s burnout or just the constant workload with very little appreciation. I have some issues with my program too, especially the backstabbing and the feeling that some people are willing to step on others to get ahead. I’m almost halfway through the year and feel like I can never catch a break. For those who have felt this way, how are y’all coping? Does it actually get better, or do we just get better at dealing with it?

I feel like if your life isn't at least average (if not above average) in terms of having support and stability outside of residency then you're fucked.

I have dealt with a disproportionate amount of bad things during my medical education/training and I manage REALLY well all things considered!! But the other day I broke a bit and I haven't recovered

I was getting chewed out for not knowing a bunch of trials among some other petty things where my attending just wasn't giving me a break. I just had a significant loss in my family and had been having recurrent dreams about my close dead relatives, then got news my literal only remaining immediate family member is newly sick, developed worsening headaches which were BAD that day, and was having some GI upset that day too as a little icing on the cake lol.

In the same week, I also had abstracts due for a conference.. which I never submitted because I was so burnt out and the mere thought was inducing panic and anxiety in me.

That day, I never felt so much like genuinely wanting to ~end it~ during residency so far because both mentally and physically I was just spent. It actually scared me a bit, and I'm not a stranger to coping with depression and anxiety.

Residency is enough to burn out and break anyone for sure. Sometimes idk how we do it in general. But I do think of my coresidents with stable situations, siblings and/or a nuclear family unit that is alive (who can care for each other, because I've been my family's caretaker), and a live-in supportive significant other at home who helps cook, clean, laundry, etc. Those few things would help me SO much. ONE of those would help me so much.

I think about my co-residents who are able to read a lot outside of work, are up to date on everything, doing research, and get a lot of praise for it. But the ones who do that are also usually living in pretty ideal environments. Logically, I shouldn't beat myself up, but I don't *want* to slip up because of external factors either. I'm a doctor, I should be reading and learning and knowing stuff.

How do we do it, fellow People Like Me?

Hi, I just submitted my application for my Illinois Medical License. Some people suggested driving down to Springfield to get it. How soon can one go? I submitted by application last week and my understanding is it takes some time for the fingerprints/criminal background to process as well. When is it recommended to drive to Springfield?

How are you guys managing the cost of living as residents

I used to pride myself on my concise but comprehensive beautiful masterpiece DC summaries. I would spend 15 minutes crafting each on average. Everything...test results, med changes and why, follow-up action items, appointments, focused conversations and their outcomes, the works.

Then I realized it was fucking killing me. I love a well done DC summary when I see pts in the office for follow-up. The problem is, it seems like no one else fucking cares. So I'm stuck in the office reading through a co-fellow's shit ass DC summary that says either absolutely nothing or it just a bunch of copy and pasted shit that doesn't make sense; even worse, sometimes it's just a series of progress notes copied and relabeled as "DC summary".

Now, we have coders that send us daily epic chats/queries/whatever starting the day the patient is discharged - daily reminders that admin gives no fucks about patient care, only billing. They are rushing us. After this weekend, I had 9 DC summaries to do.

So I took a hit of that sweet, sweet AI slop. It does too much, that's for sure. But a single click and 1 minute of revisions is infinitely better than what I was doing. I'm a third year fellow with 7 weeks of inpatient bullshit left and I'm just...tired. I'm tired of attendings being dicks, tired of the nonstop barrage of epic chats and pages and "this problem is a fucking emergency, respond now or you will be reported." It's almost never an emergency. Everyone in the hospital thinks their problem is the most serious and emergent thing to ever exist, and the fellow is the choke point where all this shit flows.

So, fuck em. They wanna put so much pressure and emphasis on this shit, let em get what they pay for. I wish it didn't come to this, but they can suck my AI clanker scribe's dongle. It's a race to the bottom now. Sorry to any of you that will have to read these shitty DC summaries.

I’m in an academic pccm fellowship and I feel like the fellowship is too chill. We have a lot of time off compared to residency and a lot of chill rotations with not a ton of clinical volume. I’m just worried I’m not going to be adequately trained when I graduate

Current IM PGY-3 and got the worst ITE score throughout residency this year. I'm very worried I won't pass boards. I am a decent test-taker, have never failed any exams, and scored well on all 3 steps.

ITE scores:

PGY-1: 60% correct, 47th percentile

PGY-2: 71% correct, 75th percentile

PGY-3: 65% correct, 25th percentile

The night before, I got ~3 hours of sleep and was literally falling asleep during the first 2 blocks. I am otherwise a well-performing resident and have never had complaints regarding clinical skills. My program has us do a fixed number of board questions each block, which I do in a very nonchalant way since it's a requirement, and I get 60-70% correct. I don't understand how I did so much worse and feel horrible. Also, does the percent correct or percentile matter for board pass estimation? Feel like crap and would appreciate any advice!

Despite the copium, it’s clear AI in medicine is here to stay.

Whether we as physicians really see job market impacts in 5, 10, or 20 (the timeline I personally foresee) years, which specialties do you think are first on the chopping block?

While some say rads/path given the pattern recognition basis of the fields, I actually think the more generalized, algorithm based specialties such as IM and EM could see the first squeeze from hyper-polished LLMs.

I’m imagining bare bones ERs where AI collects the history and suggests appropriate workup, treatment and dispo, and a midlevel spends their shift at a computer approving the output. Maybe at the start there will be a push for the provider to do some face to face history collection or explaining test results, but honestly AI could do such a better job at explaining it to the patients level, and offer ample room for questions and explanations. It obviously loses the empathy component, but tbh that’s not something I really care about when I have to go to the doc.

The counter argument for EM would be the need to respond to traumas, but even if AI isn’t involved much there, that still replaces a big chunk of their shift’s work.

Can people please share the salary offers they were getting for hospitalist just out of residency? Include which state you are in bc salaries can vary heavily.

Please help increase transparency in salaries for medical trainees people of Reddit! It’s so hard to find anyone to talk to about these things and fresh grads end up having no idea how much to expect or negotiate etc.

I’m a IM intern struggling a bit. I have no confidence in making plans and decisions. Im struggling academically scored 1st percentile in ITE. I’m not stupid I scored a 518 on my MCAT but struggling. everyone says just do uworld and practice questions but I feel like it does nothing for me. for example for first step my baseline was 62% right, I did all of uworld reviewed every questions and then my score was still 62%. I just can’t learn I do a questions and immediately forget, I cant keep up in rounds I always forget details on my patients and get overwhelmed, pls help. when I do questions I’m never certain of answers ever, coming up with plans I need AI to make even the smallest decision because I just don’t know.

I’ll be meeting up on google meet from 7 to 9pm CST daily between now and then if you’d like me to share screen as I do a block of 40 med study questions and then review the major points with my study partner aloud.