LogFAQs > #969508370

Ooooooranges posted...

Would you explain why you think doctor salaries are overinflated?

Sorry I missed your question the first time. Not trying to dodge it.

The biggest issue is that nurses do the majority of the actual work and get paid a fraction of wage that the doctor they work with gets. My entire interaction with the doctor in this situation was a grand total of about 5 minutes. He asked for my story/symptoms, said "here's what we're gonna do" and then left the room so the nurses could actually do it. Then he came back at the end and said "you're all good to go. The nurse will give you the prescription" and left again.

Now once again, I don't blame him. He's probably working long hours, it's the middle of the night in a packed emergency room, and my problems were probably very low on the totem pole of severity that he's dealt with that night alone. But I have several very close friends who have worked in various medical fields for years, and the stories I hear about the day-to-day work they have to do compared to the doctors that they work with are just absurd.

It should be noted that when I'm talking about overinflated salaries for doctors, I'm not referring to people like open-heart surgeons, for example. There are obviously many medical professions that absolutely are worthy of a crazy high salary due to both the insane skillset required and the mental discipline to not let seeing such horrible trauma constantly break you down. It's fucking impressive. And if I'm going under the knife for a serious life-saving procedure, I'd probably feel more comfortable if the surgeon is making $300k than if he was only getting paid $70k as an indication for both his motivation and his skill level/experience.