no problem. im glad to answer any questions i can.

i would say that NPs and PAs are going to be filling a very important need : access to primary care. i think FP and IM docs will not be drastically affected because the primary care shortage is so tremendous as well as the continued wishes of some patients who still prefer seeing a physician over a mid-level provider. so i’m not concerned that they will take over the field, but happy that they will be helping more patients.

i think ER docs have more flexibility in their schedule than FM docs who practice in a traditional setting. by traditional setting, i mean working in a group practice or hospital employed practice with only 4 weeks off per year and 1 week of CME. if you opened your own practice or worked as a hospitalist or did locums or worked in an ER as a family medicine trained physician, then your schedule would be as flexible as your ER friend and having more freedom!

with all that said, i think ER is a great field too with a lot of interesting clinical scenarios. it all boils down to what you want to do. keep in touch and good luck with your medical career!

thuc

On a separate note, I talked to an ER doc who liked to travel and would work in one location for a couple months then try another location just to see the country. It seemed like it was pretty easy for him to move around to various jobs. I enjoy doing stuff out of the country and traveling. My concern is that family medicine may tie me down too much and that something like emergency medicine gives me more freedom to go and do what I want to do… ie… go work in Africa for a year. Is this reasonable thinking?

Thanks for any advice you have! I’m a first year and just trying to figure it all out!

A lot of variation depending on whether the school is private versus state, geographical location, whether you got grants or scholarships, etc. I went to a caribbean medical school and have listed the cost of tuition for those kinds of schools, here http://caribmd.com

As far as average debt, it really depends on the above and how much you spend for living expenses while in school. Mine was less than 50k because my parents were able to help me out. I owe them a lot for supporting me.

Thanks for stopping by.

thanks for coming back to my site and giving me some feedback to improve on. so i just added the Wibiya Toolbar which should now be present at the bottom of the site. on it, you can access my twitter, the new facebook page, subscribe to RSS, share the page with other websites, or connect to your social networks straight from MD Salaries!

i wish you the very best luck with Step 1. i hate that test ! my program doesn’t have any minimum requirements for Step 1 because they like to look at applicants as a whole. the only thing they will not accept (as far as i know) is an applicant from a foreign medical school not approved by California. (i was the last)

Sara