Thanks a lot for your reply. I can see where you coming from. Definitely, Im not trying to make a specialty choice based solely on this factor. The reason financial remuneration can be a discerning factor is when, say, one loves medicine and some procedures in one's career, so one cannot decide on nephro or cardio then if cardio has better earning potential, why not go for cardio? Besides, by earning potential, I mean earning within the legal and ethical boundaries. Surely, within this context, from what I know, some specialties working for the same hours can earn higher pay than some other specialties, perhaps because of higher patient demand, or perhaps of unfair fee schedule. What I would like to do is to avoid those specialties, where you work as hard as other specialties but somehow the earning is relatively low.

Unless you are trying to tell me there is no such difference among different specialties, you can earn as much as you want regardless of your specialties, then my question would be reasonable. Just as we all know, some specialties are well-known for having higher compensations compared to other specialties even though all specialties work equally hard. For example, salary surveys from US have like ortho, neurosurg, cardio, cardiothoracic consistently on top of their lists across many years. The difference between these top earning specialties and the low earning specialties can be huge. So are those data relevant in Malaysia private context? Or would you say, in Malaysia, most are roughly the same, there is not so much variation among different specialties?

Thank you very much.