 So it seems to me we always have this common thread causing most of the problems in medical education, student debt. Welcome back to the channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Cilini, and I am a board certified diagnostic and interventional radiologist in New Jersey. Now, for some reason, since I recently started talking about finance, building wealth, planning for your future, retirement, all that good stuff on my channel, people have been coming out of the woodwork with negative comments. They say I'm only in it for the money or I should be spending more time learning how to be a good doctor or that I went into medicine and became a doctor for all the wrong reasons. Now, this is kind of ridiculous seeing as becoming a doctor and loving your career and your patients and also building wealth are by no means mutually exclusive. The whole reason I talked about this stuff on my channel is to shed some light on these topics and maybe provide someone with the ability to love their career and prevent burnout. But these negative comments did make me think about something. Is there any downside to the healthcare system in society if doctors decide to become financially independent, prevent burnout by working less and ultimately retire early or at the very least go part time? Will this have an overall impact on healthcare? Will doctors becoming financially independent and retiring early ultimately affect the healthcare system as a whole? This question crossed my mind which prompted me to do some pretty intense research. So let's get into the video. By now you may have seen my recent video talking about the US physician shortage and if you haven't seen it I'll leave a link up to the video here. In this physician shortage is the reason why the US government is addressing the doctor shortage head on and paying for a thousand new residency spots over the next five years. And of course the money for these new residency spots will come from Medicare which provides health insurance for people over 65 years old but it also covers residency spots as well. And if you wanna read more on this topic I'll leave a link to a very good article on this subject below. So like I mentioned prior if you have a physician shortage with the increased demands placed on physicians and other healthcare workers currently which ultimately leads to burnout will more physicians start to retire early and focus on financial independence and will this further add to the physician shortage? Well a plastic surgeon by the name of Jordan Frey doesn't think so and I kind of agree. Oh and you're probably wondering who the heck is this doctor Jordan Frey? Well he's the author of an op-ed piece that I recently found while doing research on this topic. And it's actually pretty good and touches on a few good points and I'll leave a link in the description below and I will also talk about that article in this video. So Dr. Frey basically mentions that all the reasons doctors are being discouraged from practicing medicine are all the things that cause physician burnout such as loss of autonomy, decreased reimbursement, increased administrative responsibility, et cetera. And the answer to avoid all of these things that cause burnout is to gain financial independence and maybe retire early or at least cut back on your work hours. So what is financial independence and retiring early? This is also called FIRE, F-I-R-E or financial independence retire early. The author gives a quick example to strengthen his point which we'll touch on here. Imagine you are a doctor that is very unhappy in their current medical practice but you stay at your job. But why? Why would you stay at your job if you're so unhappy? Well, the reason is you need a paycheck and you need a paycheck to survive. So what if all of a sudden you didn't need that paycheck? Imagine you could practice medicine the way you wanted to and not because you need to AKA how medicine is intended to practice. If this were the case, you could practice as you choose and make the necessary changes to improve your job satisfaction or you could leave your job altogether and find a better practice that would fit your needs regardless of your choice, you would be doing something to make you happy and a happy doctor means you have happier patients and ultimately better patient care. So why is gaining financial independence often misunderstood amongst physicians? Why is it frowned on by the older generation? Well, for most of us we become physicians to help people. We sacrifice a lot of time and energy to do so and most of us don't wanna give that up. Well, there are some but most physicians don't wanna give that up because we worked really hard to get to this point. However, becoming financially independent is a way for you to practice medicine as you choose and as freely as you choose. This would allow doctors more time and energy to put into systemic changes or helping patients or furthering better research or even spend time improving access to patient care. This is why the author believes that gaining financial independence is a cure for the physician shortage, not another contributor for it. Furthermore, I know we talked on this subject a lot but imagine how many young intelligent people would go into medicine if student debt was not a thing. Imagine you didn't have to worry about student debt and becoming financially independent as a young physician was actually attainable. We would have more doctors practicing medicine the way they want to and not just because they have to. This would ultimately benefit healthcare in a very big way. And trust me, I did a ton of messages from students in high school and also students in college who are actually very concerned about student debt and taking on such a large financial burden just to go into medicine. I think it's actually a way bigger deal than we probably think. It seems kind of counterintuitive. Like wouldn't you want to provide any means necessary for bright minds for our future to practice medicine? It seems so backwards. Opening more medical schools through funding from the executive branch will unfortunately not help the physician shortage as intended because more medical schools operating in the current model will only discourage more doctors from going into the fields needed most such as primary care and pediatrics. And this is due to the climbing debt and decreasing reimbursements which is anti-fire formula against financial independence and retirement early. And I have to admit, I had never actually thought of it this way. If we continue the current massive debt trajectory that we're currently in and we are opening more medical schools to allow for more physicians to be created in the US, it won't really do much because most people will still likely go into subspecialties because they tend to pay better which allows you to actually pay off your student loans. So we're kind of just in this perpetual circle here with no solution. So it seems to me that we always have this common thread causing most of the problems in medical education, student debt, student debt. So how do we combat everything I just mentioned without doing anything about student debt or burnout? Well, we learn how to become financially independent which is why it's so important for medical education to at least teach the bare minimum on personal finance and wealth management. If we aren't doing anything about the larger issue at hand, AKA student debt and burnout, we have to take matters in our own hands and find a way around it, AKA becoming financially independent. And this is the exact reason why I talked so much about these topics on my channel and why I've essentially transitioned my channel into mostly talking about these subjects. Maybe at least one person will pick up on what I'm putting down and maybe they'll learn something and it may help them out on their financial journey going forward. So how ultimately do we even start this journey of becoming financially independent or even learning about financial independence or financial education? Well, you do the same thing you did to learn medicine. You learn it on your own. You sit down and you just do it yourself. Educate yourself, watch YouTube videos, become interested, read books, become a member of forums and surround yourself with people who think the same as you. Do the exact same thing you did in order to learn medicine, but only for finance. The funny thing is that fire or financial independence in retiring early is actually pretty simple. Save, don't spend beyond your means and invest wisely. Eventually you will be able to practice medicine on your own terms and retire as you see fit. You will not only improve your financial status but also your own health and ultimately bringing more joy to you and ultimately your patients. And that officially concludes this video. Hopefully you all enjoyed it. Hopefully you learned something and maybe it motivated you to go out there and do some financial research, get some financial education under your belt and focus on becoming financially independent. So as always make sure you smash the like subscribe button follow me on Instagram and TikTok if you don't already and watch our podcast that we've been putting out every single week with Chalini rounds and otherwise I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.