4 ms·
As a physicist, I have been, on odd occasions of boredom and quarter-life-crisis, tempted to go into medicine. But the only type of medicine I'd be interested i
by hugh3 15y ago
As a physicist, I have been, on odd occasions of boredom and quarter-life-crisis, tempted to go into medicine. But the only type of medicine I'd be interested in is radiology.
Walk in, cure a patient with physics, walk out, earn $600K a year. Sounds pretty sweet!
What's that? You have cancer? No worries, I have radioactive beams! Zap! You're cured!
Unfortunately you gotta go through many years of the more usual, squishy form of medicine before they'll let you become a radiologist, so I stuck with my existing career path.
- randallsquared 15y agoI knew a radiation oncologist in the late 90s, and his reason for becoming a webapp startup founder instead was that radiology was destroying him: in that field, most of your patients die, rather than being cured. You're mostly just prolonging things.
- dmm 15y agoAll patients die. The job of a specialist is to make sure they die of something else.
- eugenejen 15y agoI see. And this is really frustrating unless you change the mindset to take everyday that is gained as a little victory for patients to enjoy life. But for patients of terminal cancers, the quality of life only deteriorates. Having seen both my parents suffered terminal cancers and passed away, I think any economical way that can make people living to the end without losing quality of life is more important than prolonging life. And IMHO that is a very tough problem to work on.