In this article let’s take a look at step by step on whether being a doctor in India is worth it or not by looking at all the pros and cons in detail.
This is the most comprehensive article you can find online on this topic so I would recommend you to bookmark the article and share it with your friends.
So without further ado let’s dive right in.
Table of Contents
is being a doctor worth it in India?
To summarise in brief words, being a doctor is definitely worth it as long as you have the passion to help people and treat them, if you have interest words biology, and you are willing to spend a lot of time of your life in education, You can afford it, then becoming a doctor in India is definitely worth it.
Now let’s take a look at pros and cons of being a doctor in India to understand whether you should become a doctor or not in detail
Pros and cons of being a doctor in India
Pros of being a doctor in India.
High demand
One of the main advantages of becoming a doctor in countries like India is there is a huge demand for doctors.
According to times of india, 10.41 lakh doctors are there practicing in India, which is a doctor: patient (D:P) ratio of 0.74:1000, for 1.4 billion people, The WHO says there should be a minimum D:P ratio of 1:1000.
Or the ratio of doctors to patient is 1:1450 in our country.
This clearly shows that there is a huge demand and supply gap in the doctor’s and medical industry.
Similarly there is also a huge demand for other specialisations of medical science such as surgeon, psychologist, gynaecologist, cardiologist etc.
High salary
Another advantage of being a doctor in India is you can have high salaries.
Because there is a huge demand of doctors in India, It comes no surprise that salary is also high.
As a matter of fact the average salary of a doctor is around 70,000 rupees per month or eight lakh rupees per annum and the salary will depend upon the experience of the doctor, specialisation, whether the doctor is in government or private sector, etc factors.
But overall doctors enjoy pretty much good paycheck.
Purposeful career & meaningful life
Another advantage of being a doctor is you can have a very purposeful and meaningful life and career.
You should know that in India doctors are considered to be the god because they have the power to give life to somebody.
And as a doctor you can save lives of many people and this can give you a lot of happiness job satisfaction because when you save somebody’s life you not only save an individual life but give happiness for the entire family and you can add a significant impact in the life of others not just today but in upcoming future by saving their life.
Because of this reason you also get a lot of respect due to your profession from the society and people.
Start your own business
another advantage of being a doctor is you can also start your own business.
As a matter of fact, there were an estimated of 70000 public and private hospitals in our country in 2019 and the number also grew now Uttar Pradesh is the state where there are more private hospitals as compared to the public and government-owned hospitals, and because Uttar Pradesh is also the highest population state in our country.
This is a big thing to notice that even if you don’t get a job as a doctor you can still start your own clinic and then move on to start any hospital as you get more experience and collect more funds and slowly you can start your own business of health sector.
And apart from that you can also work in government hospitals and NGOs.
Wide career options
Another advantage of being a doctor is it has a wide career option.
There are various types of doctors you can become by getting specialisation in different parts of body for example,
- You can become cardiologist by getting specialisation of heart
- You can become psychology and psychiatrist by understanding human behaviour and brain
- You can become a paediatrician who specialises in treating children
- You can become a gynaecologist by specialising in female reproductive system
- You can become a dermatologist by specialising in skin and hair of humans
- You can become ophthalmologist by specialising in eye care
- You can become a neurologist by specialising in treating diseases of brain and nervous system
- You can also become a family physician who provides treatment for various diseases in many parts of the body for both male and female of all ages as a family doctor
These are a bunch of career options you can choose and what’s amazing is almost all of these career options are in highly demand specialisations in our country.
Because According to the data, there are only 3.7 lakh specialist doctors in our country and depending upon your interest you can choose anyone and specialise in that area.
Future proof career
Another advantage of being a doctor is it is very future proof career option.
What I mean by this is that it cannot get replaced by artificial intelligence in future.
What’s surprising is according to McKinsey report, by 2055 half of the jobs humans do manually will be automated and replaced by artificial intelligence.
And if you check there are many jobs like, security guards, proofreaders, customer service executives, bookkeeping and data entry, manufacturing and pharmaceutical work, courier services and soldiers, taxis and bus drivers, nurses, slowly getting replaced by automation and robots.
But when it comes to doctors it is very unlikely that AI would completely replace doctors from the medical industry although it can definitely have some impact on doctor’s jobs,
the reason is because for any doctor to understand the problem of patient it requires a great deal of empathy and human level connection between patient and doctor which AI cannot have so It cannot replace doctors although some of the jobs will be automated to reduce human error and increase precision.
You can meet new people everyday
Another advantage of being a doctor is that you can meet new people of different age and gender everyday and this is benefit because, You not only treat the health problems but also get to know new people their ideas, perspectives,
way of thinking, thoughts, and you also grow your network with many people whether they are the students or businessman and employee or government officials and this can help you grow your business or career by getting new opportunities through word of mouth and also from your network.
Remove superstitions of people
Another advantage of being a doctor is you have the ability to influence other people, change their belief and mindset especially those who are uneducated and illiterate and there are many people like this in india
Especially older people and as a doctor, You are expert and authority, and you have power to change the mindset and influence in the decision making of the people through your expert advice and help them walk on the right direction by providing them right knowledge
This is advantage because many people still believe in many superstitions which may be sometimes harming to their health etc.
These are all the advantages and benefits of becoming a doctor in India, Now let’s take a look at the disadvantages.
Cons of being a doctor in India
Law Suits against doctors
One of the main disadvantages of becoming a doctor in India is lawsuits against doctors.
This is a dark truth of becoming a doctor.
Mal suits happen because more than 138 million people are harmed due to treatment errors, and insufficient care, and more than 2.6 million people die due to human error every year worldwide.
The punishment can be either fining the doctor, or removing the name of the doctor from indian medical council register and take away his license in some cases depending upon the case, these are legal laws for the patients against doctors.
This is much better In India, because in America According to the Medical Malpractice Center, there are between 15,000 and 19,000 medical malpractice suits against doctors every year.
This is the reason why doctors have a lot of huge responsibility on their shoulders whenever they are treating the patients because as I already mentioned earlier they have the ability and power to give life to somebody with their knowledge,
skill and if something goes wrong due to mistake of the doctor or some error then it can be very costly for not only the patient but also for the career of the doctor and because of this doctors also have a lot of stress and pressure of work.
For example if somebody dies due to the error of the doctor while treating the patient (as you can check more than 2.6 million people died due to this every year worldwide) the doctor will most probably carry the guilt of killing the patient which affects his mental health and cause stress for the rest of the life.
Violence against doctors
Violence against doctors is also one such main disadvantage in India and it is a dark truth You must know.
There are different types of violence happen against doctors like, verbal abuse physical violence mob lynching harassment, etc.
As a matter of fact according to a study of the Indian medical association, 75 percent of doctors in India faced violence at some time in their life, and mostly, it is verbal abuse.
This happens because great power comes with great responsibility and because doctors have the power of giving life to somebody, but there are many people in our country who believe that it is probably the mistake or incompetency of the doctor (even if it is not sometimes) for the loss of the life of the individual.
Because of this reason many people go violent and try to abuse and attack doctors in anger and frustration due to the loss of life and if you want to become a doctor in India then you must be prepared for violence both physical and verbal more as compared to foreign countries.
Prone to get infection and disease
Another disadvantage of being a doctor is that you can be very prone to getting infections and disease when you are treating people with those diseases.
This has become more popular due to the covid pandemic. More than 1,000 doctors, and an untold number of medical personnel, have died after coronavirus infections in our country.
Even before the pandemic, doctors were very prone to get infected and disease because of working closely with the patients because many viruses diseases pass through air and with closed contact of the patient.
Stress and depression due to long working hours
Another disadvantage is stress and depression is also very high in doctors due to long working hours and workload.
A recent review of health care professionals found one in four reported depression and anxiety, and one in three suffered insomnia during COVID-19. And many doctors also commit suicide due to such issues and also because of long working hours and workload.
On average doctors work around 80-100 hours every week and sometimes go up to 120 hours on average especially during covid pandemic the workload has significantly increased on doctors which caused them burn out, and depression.
Unemployment of doctors in India
Another disadvantage of being a doctor in India is growing unemployment ratio of doctors even though there is a huge demand for them in our country as I already mentioned earlier.
The thing is more than 2 lakh doctors in India are unemployed and they can definitely work in many rural areas if the government puts more focus towards the health sector in the country as India’s health care expenditure is 3% of its GDP and
it has to increase 2% more spending of its GDP in health care to transform the health industry and provide more facilities for the people and also employment for the doctors in the rural areas.
By 2030 India will have one million additional MBBS doctors; currently only 50,000 per year are graduating.
This is because of mismanagement of human resources in the government the unemployment of the doctors is also a big issue to deal with because not everyone can start their own business and clinic.
This is kind of an astonishing thing about the situation of doctors in our country.
Irregular working hours
Another disadvantage of being a doctor is irregular working hours which is kind of similar to higher workload.
Because you are dealing with diseases and infections of patients, they will arrive with no time bounding like midnight emergency calls, sometimes doctor would treat patients in the weekends and Sundays as well when they would take rest.
Although most doctors take rest in the weekends and Sundays but it is always a possibility that doctors would work in irregular working hours especially if you are a surgeon or a cardiologist.
Expensive education
Another disadvantage of becoming a doctor in India is expensive education.
As a matter of fact it would take 2-7 lakh rupees to get your MBBS degree from a government college whereas between 20 lakh to 1 crore rupees to get your MBBS from private medical colleges in our country.
But not everyone can get the chance of admission in government medical colleges and top Government medical College is AIIMS and to get admission you need to write NEET exam which is entrance exam for medical colleges in our country, approximately 50000 doctors graduate from various medical colleges in our country every year.
Because of expensive education, many students take loans and get into debt.
This was the exact reason thousands of students went to Ukraine to study MBBS because it was way cheaper and reasonably good education in Ukraine compared to India.
So if you want to become a doctor in India you must be prepared to spend huge amount of money in private medical colleges if you don’t get admission in government college.
Continuous education
Another disadvantage of being a doctor in India is continuous education.
So if you want to become a doctor in India, You first have to obviously write the neat exam which is entrance exam for MBBS colleges, the MBBS degree is 5.5 years long,
and then you need to take the internship of 12 months to spend some time and learn the necessary skills and then you can become a doctor and start practising in any hospital so it will take you around 7 years to become a doctor after your 12th.
And if you want to get into higher specialisation then you need to do courses like MD, DM, MS, MCh, DNB, which will take at least one or two years more.
And After spending seven or eight years after your 12th in education, still when you become a doctor or surgeon you will have to continue with your education
like a life long learning process and learn new things and keep yourself updated with latest techniques, tactics for treatment of diseases so becoming a doctor is not easy as you will have to do continuous education in the field.
These are all the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a doctor in India.
With that said let’s end the article.
Conclusion
These are all the pros and cons of becoming a doctor in India.
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