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?

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
    116·
    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.

    • 200ok@lemmy.world
      38·
      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.

    • SacralPlexus@lemmy.world
      19·
      2 months ago

      Doctor here. 👋 I just wanted to give my experience. I had to do eight years of schooling/debt, THEN I had to do 6 years of post graduate training (internship, residency, fellowship).

      Now the post graduate years are paid like a job but not at a physician salary rate so paying on student loans during that time was next to impossible for me because I was in a high cost of living area. So my interest continued to compound during that time. It sucked.

      As for the OP I just want to say that part of the reason I expect a higher salary is because I gave up 14 years of my life - most of my youth - in training to get here. Those 14 years were immensely valuable and I often regretted going down this path because of all the things I gave up instead. The training was incredibly difficult and time consuming. I lost touch with all my friends, had to move repeatedly, etc. It was absolutely brutal and felt endless. That’s part of what those paychecks are paying for.

  • db2@lemmy.world
    89·
    2 months ago

    Become a doctor, then the nurses can hate you whenever you decompress too.

  • rhacer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    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.

    • spittingimage@lemmy.world
      15·
      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.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
    59·
    2 months ago

    The fact that you’re jealous of a person who spent ten years of their life studying in a stressful and competitive school with over $100k in student loan debt reveals to me you have no awareness and are exactly in the correct job you were supposed to be in.

    • EatATaco@lemm.eeEnglish
      17·
      2 months ago

      Look at the grammatical errors throughout their post. The cherry on top being the statement at the end being terminated with a question mark.

      They also just recently had a question that includes them being on a pip.

      I get the feeling that this person should be grateful that this doctor is only making enough more than they are that they would use the word “twice” to describe the salary discrepancy.

      • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
        8·
        2 months ago

        Oh wow, just checked out their posts and they’re the same person who asked about a “US vs the country of Europe” comparison recently.

        • EatATaco@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          I can’t remember a time that I’ve heard a more obvious projection, especially when it makes no sense. Who would read my post and get “triggered” from it? Lol

    • abbadon420@lemm.ee
      15·
      2 months ago

      Yes, they don’t understand, so what?. Maybe they’re young, maybe they just never learned. Do you really think your backhanded comment is going to make things better? If you want to strike people down for asking questions that are too simple from your perspective, you should visit stack overflow more often.

      You response mentions the right issues, but tone of voice matters. If you insult, belittle or alienate anyone who tries to understand what they don’t understand, you’re just throwing them to the republicans or the right wing populists.

      People these days are often not interested in learning or understanding. If someone does, you should encourage that.

    • Githyanki@lemmings.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      I think they know. The problem is the doctor that about all of the work gets paid as much as the others that do his and their own.

      My wife got a position at a teaching hospital and the director was making about 2.5x her salary. When the administration figured out he was completely unqualified to be the director, they made him a faculty and her the director. Now he still made 2.5x her salary and proceeded to just sit in his office and not do any of the work. He was tenured and so it took 4 years to force him out of the school. He of course quit and got a job elsewhere just before being fired.

      Some people are just lazy and worthless, but are able to study hard enough to learn how to pass the tests. Then they try and coast thru life because of how hard they worked to get there.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    2 months ago

    How does anyone accept executives making 100x or more the salary of everyone else?

    Or youtubers, or twitch streamers making bank?

    • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
      5·
      2 months ago

      Okay that’s different

      A MD with 7+ years of education and loads of debt earning more than a nurse with far less education and debt is fair.

      An exec with barely any education, debt or importance earning 10× or more what the actual workers do is not fair.

      I don’t deal with that, but I also can’t fix it without unwrenching the fabric of our society and I’m going to need a lot more people for that.

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      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.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’m okay with YouTubers getting paid. A lot of them put his of thought and work into their videos without earning anything, before they do. And yt never paid any of them fairly. What I’m not ok with is it’s endless ads and creators not being fairly compensated. Hence why I donate what I can, when I can, to creators I use. I also wish invidious instance operators were easier to donate to, but I see why they aren’t.

  • stinerman [Ohio]@midwest.socialEnglish
    40·
    2 months ago

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

    Wait until you find out how lazy people with inherited wealth are…and they make way more than double your salary in passive gains.

  • teft@lemmy.world
    33·
    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’re 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.

  • Delphia@lemmy.world
    25·
    2 months ago

    If it helps at all, if you do your job right follow the doctors orders and administer care and medications as instructed you are next to impossible to be held responsible for the patient having negative outcomes. A doctor, even a hard working one who knows their shit well and does their absolute best is still under the constant threat of a career ending lawsuit from a patient.

  • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
    23·
    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.

  • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
    22·
    2 months ago

    If you’re in the US, run for Congress, win, reform the medicaid backed doctor residency program, with the aim of opening it up so many more people can become doctors. Then watch as the new supply brings down salaries, and eventually gets lazy/ineffective doctors fired. Revenge is a dish best served nation wide, as they say.

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
    18·
    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.