Long before I entered med school, I did a ROI analysis to figure out the opportunity cost of becoming a doctor. Financially, I will catch up to my cohort that went into law or engineering when I'm 56 yrs old, but w/ 3-4 longer schooling, & twice the total work hrs. /1 #MedTwitter https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1286379799326400514

But the real question is, what's the $ cost of youth spent working 80 hrs/wk? What's the true cost of not seeing your kids for 72 hrs every few days? Or having only 1-2 weekends per month? What's the cost of each summer gone, instead spent in hospitals for 16-26 stretches?

/2

What is the cost of operating with a 15 hour sleep debt, but can't fall sleep because you can't turn off your mind off the hundred decisions you had to make that day, any of which could potentially forever alter the lives of your patients and their loved ones?

/3

And what is the psychological cost of the work, inevitably witnessing tragedies that parallel horrors of war, unimaginable traumas and illnesses, natural & unnatural, both accidental & inflicted, involving all ages from infants and elderly, all on a daily basis?

/4

So it is all fine for an economist to write a Twitter essay on how he thinks docs should make what lawyers make. But I promise you, no economist or lawyer would take a job offer to work as a doctor if they really knew what it entails, without first negotiating a huge raise.

/5