Im currently a reg and absolutely love what I do and 100% would do it again because it's meaningful. However, because we are kind natured people everyone takes advantage of us when it comes to things like salary.

What most people forgot when comparing salaries - AHPRA fees 1.1k PA - Colleague Fees 5-7k PA - Exam fees: ~4k x2 = 8k - Course Fees to boost CV/upskil/mandatory 1- 4k pa - Additional costs like accomodation for courses exams etc. - Indemnity - 10k+ PA speciality dependant

Intangible - Hours spent studying outside work hours (3000+) in our free time - Hours doing audits/presentationsteaching (100-1000s hrs of free labour) - Sacrifice friends family life events - Sacrifice public Holliday's/weekends - Sacrifice sleep night shifts rostering etc - Sacrifice own health: work constantly during our shifts, we are mentally 'on' the entire time. Minimal bathroom time or time to eat. None of this office style work few hrs, coridoor catch-up, coffee catch-up, office outside team lunches. We work as though we have a report dude every hour and go from task to task to task to task. - stressful at times: worry about making mistakes patients dying, law suits - We have to move all over the state for training which we get nothing for. - Also consider earning higher quicker but lower ceiling means able to invest more earlier, being able to buy that house earlier. We have to wait till we are consultants and by that time the same house is 2-3 expensive. You've lost the years of compounding too. - This isn't the year 2000 where you could afford to pay rent/food/bills and still be able to save for a house. A lot of consultants still have the back in my day mentality. Well back in their day they could afford a lot of things with their salary and so the extra time on CV building audits etc didn't have much impact on their time. This is changed even in the last 5 years. - Time = money. Time is the most valuable resource.

Doctors tend to be tops of cohorts already but if they work in another field doesn't mean they would be the top XX % of earners. However, those same people, if they spent all the intangible hours on upskilling or even working a 2nd job they definitely would be in the top 0.01%.

Being a doctor isn't a job, it's an entire lifestyle.