← all questions · Is it worth it
Transiently, almost everyone; permanently, far fewer. The regret in these threads clusters in the pre-exam years and lifts after fellowship. It is expensive to act on: ANZCA needs five years FTE minimum 1 and CICM six, with Core Training not eligible for recognition of prior learning 2. Switching late restarts most of the clock.
The structural fact first: switching is dear. ANZCA's program is five years FTE minimum from Introductory Training 1. CICM is six years FTE minimum with 42 months ICU-specific, and its 24-month Core Training phase is explicitly not eligible for recognition of prior learning 2 — so time served in another college does not carry across in the way people hope. That asymmetry is why the dominant advice in these threads is "finish, then reassess", not "leave now".
Regret is not evenly distributed across a career. The threads show it peaking in the pre-exam advanced-training window — knowing enough to want ownership, still being treated as pre-exam — and dropping sharply after fellowship, when the consultant can buy control back with FTE 5. A recent anaesthetics consultant describing 0.6 FTE at more than registrar money is the clearest version of that arc 5.
Where it doesn't lift. The persistent regret is about the job the consultant actually does, not the training. The ED example recurs: people who loved the specialty find the consultant role is running a department and doing shift work into their forties 6. That is a specialty-design problem you can see in advance by watching bosses, not registrars.
What that means for a PGY2. Choose on what the consultant's Tuesday looks like, and on the pathway length you can actually tolerate — ATO 2023–24 medians run from $156,733 for GPs to $537,049 for neurosurgeons 3, and the years in between are the real price. About 52% of the 2024 Medical Training Survey cohort were unaccredited or non-specialist trainees 4; that is where regret concentrates.
Not published: no Australian college reports how many trainees withdraw or switch programs, so any switching rate you see quoted is invented.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
Everyone does at some point. I firmly believe you need to push through during times of indecision - finishing your program as quick as possible is the only option.
Consultant life though is amazing; I am working 0.6 FTE and earning a lot more than I was as a reg.
Yes. Emergency. I love it, but my job now as a consultant isn't even looking after patients really, it's looking after the department.
Not a single day.
Sometimes. 20 and 30 year old me wanted to do ED. 40 year old me would rather be a private anaesthetist some days!
Asked 6 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in the r/ausjdocs dump (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /regret.{0,40}(specialt|specialit|choice|career|training)|(specialt|career).{0,30}regret/i. Quotes are the top-scoring comments across the two main regret threads, balanced so the flat 'not a single day' and the fellowed consultant's 0.6 FTE sit against the ED consultant who still regrets it and the 'everyone does at some point' framing.