FOR NEARLY THREE years of med school, I teased my friends who wanted to specialize in surgery. I’d heard stories of tantrums in the operating room, of residents too tired to be friendly, much less teach. But the first time I sutured a jumbled gash into a thin, smooth line, I knew I wanted to be a surgeon.
All medical students tell a version of this story, most of us acting as if our hero’s journey has nothing to do with the money. But everything in medicine is about the money in some way or another. The higher a specialty’s salary, the more people want to do it and the more competitive it becomes. As medical burnout
