how do I accept that a doctor earns more than double what I do?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨vestmoria@linux.community⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I’m a nurse and oversaw a doctor checking his bank statements: his salary is a bit more than twice what I earn.

This is not a particularly productive doctor, if you listen to several doctors and nurses where I work at. Just today I overheard a group of 3 female doctors ranting about him and how all he does is sitting and playing with his phone, always redirecting us nurses to talk to the other doctors. I was surprised, because I never expected to find so much drama between doctors, them being much more educated than nurses and I never expected doctors, specially female doctors, to use that kind of language.

This lazy doctor earns more than double my salary. It’s depressing.

But I also feel like a loser, because even those ranting doctors earn more than twice what I do… and they get to sit for longer than I do.

Regretting my life choices.

Maybe the sane choice here would be to study or to get a certification that means a higher salary?

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Comments

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db2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Become a doctor, then the nurses can hate you whenever you decompress too.

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adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Doctors go to school for seven years racking up debt, and then usually have to shoulder the burden of liability and operational costs. It’s expensive to become a medical doctor, and expensive to be a medical doctor.

These costs are part of what keeps both doctors and patients safe. Doctors end up with both the power and the risk.

Nurses by comparison have only basic training before on the job training kicks in; it’s relatively easy to become a nurse, and if you mess up, the worst that’s going to happen is that you get fired and have to go work somewhere else.

But even as a nurse, if you’re quick to pick things up, you can move up the ranks and find a specialty that has more power and pays better than a standard RN. Without the seven years of debt.

And life’s not just about pay; quality of life is generally more important, and that sucks for most doctors, who have relatively short life expectancies and limited time to spend their money.

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- 200ok@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This.
  
  Additionally, there are lazy people in every company/industry. Many of whom earn more than the average person. Oftentimes, life just isn’t fair.
  
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rhacer@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Your worth, your value is not determined by what someone else makes.

Also, I’m a bit ignorant of this subject so forgive me if I get it wrong, but did he not go to school significantly longer for his MD than you did for yours?

I believe he also had to go through the hell that is residency, I didn’t believe nurses do.

If you’re envious of his salary, improve your skills, or your education. If you’re happy where you are at In life, then don’t let the fact that others make more than you interfere with that happiness.

No matter what you do, there will always be others who make more, one of those sad facts of life.

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- spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  I believe he also had to go through the hell that is residency, I didn’t believe nurses do.
  
  Nursing education never ends. All the nurses I know are a bit loopy from the constant need to retrain and recertify.
  
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  - DrBob@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This true for every regulated profession. It’s not exceptional.
    
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  - Twinklebreeze@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I bet doctors need to retrain and recertify too.
    
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breadsmasher@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
How does anyone accept executives making 100x or more the salary of everyone else?

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- dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is a little different. Whereas executives might not have any requirement on education or performance, in the US at least you’ve got 6 years education And 2 years residency to become an MD. It is still crazy money considering I’ve got 11 years in a PhD with an actual contribution to a field, but not insane compared to a 4 year degree or less.
  
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teft@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Are you an RN or a Doctor of Nursing? If you’re an RN he has many more years of schooling than you. That alone will get him a higher salary. If you a Dr of Nursing then I’d go talk to your boss or start looking for another job.

Wages aren’t really about how much work you do, if it were then the janitor would earn the highest wages in the hospital.

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not_that_guy05@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Years of schooling and years of experience.

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BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve worked for and with people who made a lot more than me.

So what? They achieved that by doing something I didn’t. They may have also made sacrifices I didn’t. Doctors certainly busted their ass a LOT more than me - I could never do what they do in educational terms alone (not to mention the biological stuff).

Did you really get to being a nurse without knowing typical salaries for different types of nursing or different kinds of doctors?

Now to answer the real question: how to not be bothered by this. Start by changing the idea in your head that your work has the same value as the work of someone else, let alone someone who spent years more time studying than you did, and also took on a lot more debt to do so, and a lot more risk.

Go read “Your Erroneous Zones” by Wayne Dyer. It’s an intro to the methods of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) - these thoughts of yours are “scripts” that aren’t useful for you. He teaches how to change thinking such as this.

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MerrySkeptic@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Is it too late to become a nurse practitioner?

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- Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s never too late if you care!
  
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socsa@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Only twice?

I mean if you think what he does is easy then go to med school. Debt for a medical degree pays back 100x over a 20 year career. If you believe that you can do it, then there is no excuse not to.

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Boozilla@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You’ll go crazy if you dwell on this. The corporate world is the same way. Generally speaking, the less actual work a person does, the more they tend to get paid. It’s a tale as old as time.

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Kaiyoto@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If it makes you feel any better he’ll be the one that gets slapped with malpractice if he fucks up. He’s inherently accepting a certain amount of liability as a doctor.

The other thing that comes to mind is he is trained specifically in his field to diagnose and treat. As a nurse you are trained to do what you do best.

That doesn’t give him a right to be on his phone all the time and be a dipshit. Eventually, that will have consequences of some sort. Currently he’s receiving less respect and earning a shitty reputation. That might come to bite him in the ass some day. Him being lax may come out in his work and bite him in the ass too at some point.

But I understand your frustration. I’ve got shitty managers who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground and I constantly question how they got and are keeping their jobs.

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Iheartcheese@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Shit on his desk.

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andrewta@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Try to become an anaesthesiologist. They get paid more. Just a thought.

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leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
you can customize the serenity prayer as a form of mantra if it fits you more.

i use it as a constant reminder that life is what we make it to be.

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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Eh, imagine how the nurse’s assistants feel. A lot of that tier of medical care end up on disability before retirement age, after years of dealing with literally being shit on.

We’re all trapped in a capitalist hell. It doesn’t do any good for us (as in the individual) to dwell on whether or not other workers make more or less than we do. And doctors in industrialized healthcare are labor, not management or the owners. Only the ones that break free of things and open their own practice that’s independent are partially outside of labor.

But, if you look at the system as it is, doctors get extra rewards once they’re fully allowed to practice because they spend a major amount of their life and youth in specific studying and training instead of making income. They’re usually so deep into student debt that it won’t be paid off for decades. Their specialist level of training means that they have to preserve their energy and time to be able to work later in life than they might otherwise.

Nursing is kind of in between blue and white collar work. Doctors are almost always white collar. Low physical demands, but high energy/time demands, with high consequences for minor errors at times.

It isn’t that they don’t deserve the pay they get. It’s that everyone should be getting paid very well in a high risk job. If capitalism is in place, that isn’t going to happen; we’re treated like a resource instead of people. But within that framework, someone with extensive skill and education is a more valuable, and more scarce resource.

My advice? Unionize. Nurses have more power than they think. It’s a skilled profession that takes large numbers of people to keep the machine grinding along. Don’t worry about the doctor, worry about making your job more respected and valued. Be pissed at the system, and work to change it. It’s the only way that profit driven industries will realize they can only be parasites to an acceptable degree.

But, yeah, it’s always going to help if you increase your education, and thus your value to the machine. If it’s a low cost add-on to your degree/license, even better.

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jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

But I also feel like a loser, because even those ranting doctors earn more than twice what I do… and they get to sit for longer than I do.

Regretting my life choices.

What kind of “I also feel like a loser” is this feeling?

Maybe the sane choice here would be to study or to get a certification that means a higher salary?

What in particular would that get you? I mean beyond the obvious “More money would make my life easier” thought.

Peace.

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