I made $400,000 so far this year. I’m not stressed about money, but I spend my days shitting my pants and crying.

I’m a primary care doctor for a very large health system in the USA. After fees and expenses, I will probably make close to $450,000 this year.<br><br>A lot of you guys don’t believe me when I say I make this much, because you haven’t experienced it. I didn’t believe it when I was in med school, and I sure as hell didn’t believe it when I was a resident making $50,000 a year and living like I was broke. But I’m here to tell you, this is my reality.<br><br>I see 30 patients a day, every day I work. I have 2200 patients listed under my name, and 2200 families that trust me with their health. I am required to answer phone calls, messages from patients, and have to deal with a rotating door of new diagnoses that I need to manage.<br><br>I’m not here to bitch. I volunteered for this because I want to help people.<br><br>But I’m here to tell you that it’s just…not worth it. I’m so fucking stressed I’m shaking as I type this. I’m in my office, I’m supposed to be seeing patients, but today I can barely hold it together enough to call in some prescriptions.<br><br>I’m just so fucking worried I’m going to fuck up.<br><br>I have a patient with cancer who needs me to fill out disability forms. I have a patient who needs surgical clearance, but I suspect they might have something called Prinzmetal’s angina that needs work up. I have a patient with a kidney disease that is getting progressively worse, and will require dialysis someday soon. I have a patient who is steadily gaining weight and I worry about their risk of a heart attack or stroke. I have a patient with fresh CVA who requires workup as to why this happened. <br><br>And that was just today. I haven’t seen these patients in months or years. I don’t remember any of this. But I’m expected to. But I don’t. I don’t have a good memory for this kind of thing, and it’s just too much to deal with.<br><br>But I know what the alternative is. The other doctor in my office is a total piece of shit, and it is only a matter of time before he kills someone.<br><br>I have to be able to do this. It’s too much. I’m just one person, but I have 2200 families counting on me. I don’t know how to take a step back. I don’t know how to tell my practice I’m not happy, because my colleagues will just rope me into more work. I just don’t know what to do anymore.<br><br>I’m not trying to get sympathy. I’m trying to open your eyes to a system that is just broken. The US Healthcare system is broken. We are all in survival mode. None of us are doing it right, and a lot of us do it very very wrong. It’s not on us though. It’s on the system that was built and ran into the ground over decades.