← all questions · Is it worth it
Depends what you're comparing it to. Base pay is modest for a decade — NSW intern $80,638 1 — and roughly half the training cohort sits in unaccredited or non-specialist posts 3. The tail is enormous: median taxable income $457,287 for anaesthetists against $156,733 for GPs 2. The sub splits, hard.
Start with the numbers, not the vibe. A NSW intern's base is $80,638 and a fourth-year registrar's $147,664 under the 2025 determination 1. Consultant income then fans out by specialty: ATO 2023–24 median taxable income is $457,287 for anaesthetists, $430,250 for radiologists, $354,688 for intensivists and $156,733 for GPs 2. Taxable income is not billings, it is not FTE-adjusted, and the GP figure includes registrars and part-timers 2.
The cost sits in the middle, not at the end. Unaccredited and non-specialist trainees were about 52% of the training cohort in the 2024 Medical Training Survey 3 — half the people who call themselves trainees are not on a program. Three jurisdictions have now settled unpaid-overtime class actions totalling over $400 million, which is the strongest evidence available that rostered base understates the hours actually worked 4.
What the sub actually says. The recurring answer is that this is an opportunity-cost question, not a medicine question — what else were you going to do for the next decade 5. The most upvoted cautionary framing is the mountain with no summit: each milestone reveals the next one 6. The most upvoted positive framing is security — secure employment, a respected role, and a floor most careers don't have 7.
The honest version. If you want money fast, this is a bad trade; the money arrives in your mid-thirties. If you want a career that is hard to be made redundant from, with a wide range of exits inside it, the trade is defensible. The people who regret it in these threads mostly regret the specialty they chased and the years it cost, not the degree.
What nobody publishes: there is no national figure for how many graduates never reach fellowship. Treat any percentage you see quoted as an estimate.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
And then the reality of the job hits - the relentless hours, the lost weekends, the constant grind and ladder climbing. And then you get hit with training bottle necks.
I am lucky to have secure employment, a rewarding career and I am in a respected position in my community.
I equate it to climbing a mountain, where just when you just think you have reached the peak, you notice you have much much further still to go.
I'll add my 2c that I love my job. I leave work feeling refreshed and get excited to show up the next day.
The question isn't really 'worth becoming a doctor', rather what are your opportunity costs?
Asked 11 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 /worth (it )?(becoming|doing|being).{0,20}(a )?(doctor|medicine)|is medicine worth|worth (it|doing) medicine|regret.{0,20}medicine/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring comments inside those threads, picked so the two loudest cautionary framings (the grind, the endless mountain) sit beside the two loudest positive ones (loving the job, job security), with the opportunity-cost reframe in the middle.