I would bet in Colorado that isn’t true. A lost of people blow out their knees skiing every year. When I had my two shoulder replacements there 3 & 5 years ago. The majority of patients were under 50.
i work in a histopathology lab and a lot of the Drs enjoy the Monday to Friday 9-5 structure. also, a lot of them enjoy working in medicine but not in direct contact with the patient. a lot of their work is diagnosing what they see down the microscope so they enjoy the intellectual challenge. the downsides are post-mortems and going to court
Years ago I lived in a block of townhouses near a major hospital. New neighbours moved in and, talking to them, the husband revealed that he worked at the hospital. He was a doctor, on rotation there for 12 months. I asked what his specialty was and he replied that he was a plastic surgeon. I suggested that it was a wise choice - no getting called out in the middle of the night for an urgent breast implant. He just smiled wryly and said, “I get called out nearly every Friday and Saturday night to repair the faces of the drunk punched and the hands of the drunk punchers.”
But that was life out west. Years later, when he dropped in to say hello, he was posted to a more salubrious part of town and didn’t have that clientele any more.
Huh.
Must be nice.
Dr. Ferroll Sams, in his semi-autobiographical novel about going through med school, said that among his class - or at least, among his protagonist Porter Osborne’s class - dermatology was the best choice. Because your patients never die, never get well, and never wake you up in the middle of the night. He also joked that his med school gave a physical exam to the bottom third of each class. Those that could bench 250 lbs went into orthopedics; the rest into gastroenterology.
I never wanted to be a doctor, because I was horrified by the badly burnt children I saw, and the hours were /insane/. Not that I had the option anyway. But it turns out that working with badly burned children is a very positive experience. Because they come in looking like that, and then they heal up very well, and you have the satisfaction of seeing that.
Working with elderly oncology is often more existential than child oncology, because they die too, but they are leaving behind a single partner who is in their 70s, who’s been depending on and depended on for 50 years, who’s retired, doesn’t have good English, who’s got nobody else… But good oncologists love that part of their job too, because people care, and really value their friendship and expertise. How many jobs can you say that about?
The money’s good in high-end plastic surgery. You’d want it to be, because you are dealing with people who are unhappy about the way they look, because that’s the kind of people they are. And when you’ve done your best, they are still that kind of person, and now they are unhappy about your work as well. It attracts people who just fixated on money, and don’t give a stuff what the patients think. But some people just use it for money, while also doing the work they really love: helping accident victims, people ravaged by disease or congenital faults. People who value the work you do.
Do they heal psychologically too, though? I would imagine the burning experience would leave them mentally scarred for life.
Everybody is a bit sensitive to some kinds of psychological insult at every state of life, but if I had to pick, I wouldn’t put childhood as the most sensitive.
On the one hand, everything you learn in childhood you carry with you for the rest of your life. On the other hand, when you’re a kid, everything is new and different every day: you grow up in the expectation that tomorrow will be different.
I think that’s actually a very positive specialty. After all, things are always looking up! 
Yeah but how many of your patients are elderly, and are going to decline anyway?
Orthopedics is also one of the highest paying fields, which I’m sure also plays a part in why it is so desirable. According to salary.com the average salary is half a million.
I wonder what field has the biggest impact on patients quality of life? I would assume something like infectious disease specialist. You’d see a lot of people get better.
As far as which fields have the biggest impact on a patient’s quality of life, I think OB and pediatrics are probably at the top of the list, as is general surgery. Infectious disease specialists are probably a lot less likely to have a large impact on a patient’s quality of life. The issue there is that most of the patients an ID doctor treats have all kinds of comorbid conditions like advanced dementia, cancer, severe arterial vascular disease, etc. Those are the kinds of patients that are most likely to get UTIs, pneumonia, or wound infections with multidrug resistant bacteria, which is what the bread and butter of an ID doctor is these days.
ETA: Many of these patients, even if they get over a given infection, are likely to come down with another due to their underlying illnesses.
There was an op-ed piece in yesterday’s NY Times about the growing shortage of infectious disease specialists. They are highly trained but generally paid less than family physicians. The reason is that they spend long hours working on cases but perform no procedures and the insurance pay only for procedures, not thinking time. In fact, the author said he might spend a day on a difficult case and get paid nothing. With the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria (and now fungi), it is an even more important specialty. Among other things, they are experts in the use of all the new drugs coming online, many of which are more dangerous than the old line drugs and need to be used with great care.
General practice as a career choice seems to have undergone a transformation for the worse, at least in the UK (GPs being your local doctors most people see as a first port of call if they’re ill). Years back you would be struck by how civilised and stimulating a line of work this was - now they seem absolutely flat out IME, like they’re under siege. Perhaps this is just a facet of society speeding up in general.
It’s never had the esteem or cachet of other more specialised branches of medicine (although you could argue that it should as being an effective GP is clearly very demanding, takes a special person actually). But historically it seemed a good trade off with high quality of life - I’m not sure that’s there anymore (and anecdotally it isn’t as far as the few GPs I know tell me).
In the grand scheme of things being a GP is clearly still a fantastic job, but within medicine, if you have options, it doesn’t seem a very appealing path nowadays. Plus the whole internet empowering legions of the ignorant who’ve consulted Dr Google and are just here to see you for a second opinion…
GP / primary care is a tough job here in the US, as well.
I’m a firm believer in the concept that pretty much everything ought to go through the GP first, so you have someone who knows everything that’s going on with you. Even if he/she has to refer you to a specialist for something, at least he’ll be aware of your overall condition.
Unfortunately, what with costs, crazy insurance reimbursements etc, they wind up having to really cram a lot of patients into too little time. I’m sure this compromises the quality of care at times. Many doctors around here (DC suburb, i.e. a fair concentration of high-income residents) have gone concierge - which means that just to be a patient, you have to pay a large monthly or annual fee - 1800 or so, last I looked - and that’s BEFORE you even have an office visit (which gets billed to insurance like everywhere else). Their argument: this lets them reduce their patient load (they are capped at 1,000 patients total, I think), spend more time with each patient, have same-day appointments available, and other lovelies.
I had two docs in a row go concierge on me. I went to a third - lucky to get on her case load as she had terrific reviews, but she had just moved to this city so wasn’t booked up yet. She was also in a much larger practice, so less likely to go concierge.
Then SHE moved to New York. I’m beginning to take it personally! :D.