#80000hours

When people ask me why I wanted to become a doctor I normally cite the NBC show ER. As an idealistic teenager I imagined morphing into a heady combination of Dr Ross and Carter, living in a fast paced world of constant action and heroism. 

Of course that explanation is at least partially tongue in cheek and certainly not what I wrote on my medical school application. My real motivations were many, but certainly one of the main ones is one common to many medics; the idea that doctors improve and save lives. 

But how many lives do doctors actually save? If someone wants to make a big impact in peoples’ lives then is becoming a doctor an effective way to do that? The answer may not be what you would expect. 

The following links are to a 3 part series of articles which attempt to statistically calculate the average amount of lives a person saves my becoming a doctor and I found the results quite instructive. 

part one part two part three 

Its well worth a read if you are interested but here’s the headline conclusions: 

A doctor on average can expect to save 20 lives over the course of a whole career; that’s one every two and a bit years. 

To put that into context if the average person gives 10% of their salary over the course of their career to an effective charity (for example the Against Malaria Foundation) they could save 600 lives, 30 times as many as the average doctor! 

So if you got into medicine to save lives then make sure you’re giving away your money as well as your nights and weekends. And if you’re not in the health sector then you can be a life saver too by giving to an effective altruistic charity.