Interested in career in Nephrology. I need some information please?I am interested in doing work as a nephrologist. I am definitely not in it for the money. I don't even know what they get paid. Anyway, would I need to go to a special school for this? How long would it take to specialize in this? I really have no one to turn to right now. Please help. Where and how would I start off? Would my life with my girlfriend and family basically deteriorate? How about once in this career?
Posted by EasyD
You need to become a medical doctor (MD)
After high school it's 4 years college, 4 years med school, then 3 years of an Internal Medicine residency. After that, it's another 2-3 years of a Nephrology fellowship. During the residency and fellowship you'd be making about the same as a public school teacher or bus driver.
Nephrologists are among the lowest paid specialists in the medical field. You train as long as a surgeon and get paid 2-3 times less. If you want to be a pediatric nephrologist, you do more training and earn even less!
Add to this that by definition, all your patients are dying, and 90% of them are there because they a) didn't control their diabetes, b) didn't control their obesity or blood pressure, or c) both, and you'll find that it's a less than ideal career for most. You have to really, really love kidneys. I would highly recommend hanging out in a dialysis clinic for a few days to get an idea of the clinical setting.
Still, there are some up-sides. The lifestyle is better than most specialties (not too many midnight kidney emergencies at the retirement home), and the hours are sane. In other words, hourly, you're making as much as most surgeons do. There is also some excitement in the field of inventing artificial kidneys, which would put all the clinics out of business, but will probably never happen on a meaningful scale because dialysis is much more profitable.
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