Content area
Full Text
Most doctors complete their medical training without sufficient knowledge of business and finance. This leads to inefficient financial decisions, avoidable losses, and unnecessary anxiety. A big part of the problem is that the existing options for gaining financial knowledge are flawed. The ideal solution is to provide a simple framework of financial literacy to all students: one that can be adapted to their specific circumstances. That framework must be delivered by an objective expert to young physicians before they complete medical training.
KEYWORDS: Financial literacy; physician; decision-making; education; business.
Most doctors complete their medical training without sufficient knowledge of business and finance. This deficiency leads to suboptimal decisions that can harm household or business finances; vulnerability to inept or dishonest advisors; and anxiety, which can have a paralyzing effect on decision-making, and can also harm personal relationships (doctors' relationships are strained as it is; adding money matters to the list only makes relationship issues harder to overcome).
THE NEED FOR FINANCIAL LITERACY
Doctors should view financial literacy as a matter of necessity and urgency. Instead, many procrastinate or take only half measures. The harsh reality is that doctors face more financial challenges than ever:
* Increasing specialization means more years of training, which, in turn, delays earnings (putting doctors farther behind college peers who begin earning salaries much sooner in other professions);
* Increasingly complex regulations make it more challenging to launch and manage a medical practice;
* Heightened competition places tremendous pressure on private practices;
* Fraud continues to harm small and large medical practices;
* Earnings have decreased for many specialties as private practices have been merged or acquired (often by lowerpaying hospital systems); and
* Wealth management has become more complex (and hence more confusing and intimidating).
In the face of such challenges, one would think the medical community (i.e., medical schools, teaching hospitals, medical societies) would be highly motivated to equip graduates with every skill needed to succeed, including financial literacy education that meets reasonable standards of objectivity and expertise. But to date, no systematic solutions have emerged. Instead, we have a smattering of partial, ad hoc remedies, which include relying on books, discussions with mentors, participating in blogs, and attending financial advisor seminars.
Reading Books
Although a good book...