stoptothink wrote:For someone with that level of income, I could see how it would be expected socially, but I don't understand why the medical field would be any different in this respect than any other high-paying professional field.
It is different.
Perhaps partly because it is much more secure than most other "high-paying professional fields". Once you make it through med school, residency, fellowship your days of competition are, for the most part, over. You don't have to wine and dine. (Many do whine, but that is another topic entirely).
And because most physicians don't advertise.
And maybe because, when dealing with one's health and life and death, how good you are is much more important to others than the trimmings. I don't know.
Despite their staid reputations and public image, if you are good as a doctor you can pretty much do what you want, drive what you want, say what you want, be eccentric....your colleagues will say "she's a bit weird, but hell, she is dedicated and she is a good doctor- I recommend her".
At least that has been true wherever I have worked, in both academia and private practice.
The fact that there are doctors who buy fancy cars and jewelry and entertain for the purpose of impressing to "get ahead" proves nothing. Of course, there will always be people like that. And there are others who do it just because they like those things.