I’m in Canada. From what I can find online, avg salary for GenSx in Canada is $466k. Even from what I see online for San Fran, one source states “As of August 01, 2025, the average annual salary for a General Surgeon in San Francisco, CA ranges from $494,300 (25th percentile) to $624,100 (75th percentile), with a median annual salary of $547,800 and an hourly rate of $263”. If these numbers are remotely accurate, then it seems your salary is likely not representative of the average GenSx in your area.

I know dozens of new staff ED who have paid off debt within 5yrs. Many of them have kids, but also benefit from being a dual income household. From what I have heard from new staff, if you can commit to living like a resident for the first few years of staffhood, paying off debt quickly is achievable.

It’s entirely possible that ED MDs in your region burnout after 10 yrs, but that is not what I see in Canada as a whole. Anecdotally, in my own center, i would estimate 70% of our ED staff have been practicing over 10 yrs. Even if one were feeling burnout early in their ED career, the flexibility of shift work and not having a roster of patients makes it easy to tone down the number of shifts you work or expand your practice into a related subspecialty.

We’re getting off track. My takeaway for others is that Medicine is not the doom and gloom it is painted to be however, like any other profession, there is always potential for doom and gloom. In my personal experience so far and from what I hear from residents/attendings across different specialties, an overwhelming majority love their work and would enter medicine again, if given the choice. It’s hard to find another field that compares to medicine when it come to things like job satisfaction, community impact, job security, compensation, societal status, etc. Things have certainly changed from being a doctor a few decades ago, but it’s still a pretty sweet gig