I think it's funny that the first picture in the article is of a doctor taking a patient's blood pressure. It's a little ironic because I've never actually had a doctor take my blood pressure (in the US). I'm not even sure if I've had a nurse do it, but more likely a physician's assistant or phlebotomist. Just like other industries medicine has been turned into an assembly line where patients are herded through the system with professionals at each level of the training pyramid doing their part. We do this to be efficient and cost effective, but speaking from personal experience, the side effect is that information gets lost from transfer to transfer and a patient has less time to bond with a doctor. I'd like to believe that many doctors would be happier working with a patient from start to finish like in the old days.
Why doctors are sick of their profession
11–20 of 249 posts
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#12Going into a career because it's noble, rewarding or because it "helps people" seems like a mistake.
For some financial satisfaction comes 2nd.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#13You can definitely feel this as a patient. If I could give my vitals to an app and have it diagnose and prescribe remedies, I would do it in a heart beat and never visit a doctor again (of course you would need robot surgeons too :). I've never seen a doctor research anything either (although I'm sure they do behind the scenes). They seem to be pulling from whatever information cache they have in their head which I o…
Every doctor is different. If you show a desire to engage with a doctor, and get the right one, you can have one that does research. When I started on cholesterol-managing medication, my physician emailed me three recent journal articles on the effectiveness of different options and the dosing considerations. It all depends on who you have, and how they run their practice.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#14In my opinion(and general opinion), this is the most important job. Maybe we can find someone depressed(like in the article), but come on they save lives.
Everyone dies, no one gets saved forever.
Plumbers and garbage men saved more lives in the past century than doctors. (so I hear)
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#15You can definitely feel this as a patient. If I could give my vitals to an app and have it diagnose and prescribe remedies, I would do it in a heart beat and never visit a doctor again (of course you would need robot surgeons too :). I've never seen a doctor research anything either (although I'm sure they do behind the scenes). They seem to be pulling from whatever information cache they have in their head which I o…
Every doctor is different. If you show a desire to engage with a doctor, and get the right one, you can have one that does research. When I started on cholesterol-managing medication, my physician emailed me three recent journal articles on the effectiveness of different options and the dosing considerations. It all depends on who you have, and how they run their practice.
I agree that there are good doctors, but I'd rather not have it be such a crap shoot. The consistency and depth of knowledge provided by an expert system of some sort seems like the way to go.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#16You can definitely feel this as a patient. If I could give my vitals to an app and have it diagnose and prescribe remedies, I would do it in a heart beat and never visit a doctor again (of course you would need robot surgeons too :). I've never seen a doctor research anything either (although I'm sure they do behind the scenes). They seem to be pulling from whatever information cache they have in their head which I o…
> I've never seen a doctor research anything either
That's a little surprising to me. One of the coolest things about practicing medicine today is that I can pull out my phone in front of a patient and find guidelines that I'm not familiar with, medication side-effects, and other point-of-care resources that really do enhance my clinical ability in real-time.
Granted, I work in a hospital setting. Maybe it's different in the clinics.
BTW, though I feel I'm underpaid for what I do (which many outsiders would find ridiculous), I'm overall pretty happy with being a physician.
> I'd take a crowd sourced db of health info over a doctor's personal knowledge any day of the week.
So would I. But what you'd learn in the first week of hanging out with a doctor in a typical clinical setting is that most patients are frankly too uneducated to be able to use that kind of tool. When I did residency, I suspect most of the patients I saw didn't have internet. Many were illiterate and a disturbing number simply didn't care about their own well-being.
I'd love to build up a practice with patients like you, but people like you tend to be pretty healthy.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#17You can definitely feel this as a patient. If I could give my vitals to an app and have it diagnose and prescribe remedies, I would do it in a heart beat and never visit a doctor again (of course you would need robot surgeons too :). I've never seen a doctor research anything either (although I'm sure they do behind the scenes). They seem to be pulling from whatever information cache they have in their head which I o…
> I've never seen a doctor research anything either That's a little surprising to me. One of the coolest things about practicing medicine today is that I can pull out my phone in front of a patient and find guidelines that I'm not familiar with, medication side-effects, and other point-of-care resources that really do enhance my clinical ability in real-time. Granted, I work in a hospital setting. Maybe it's differen…
> When I did residency, I suspect most of the patients I saw didn't have internet. Many were illiterate and a disturbing number simply didn't care about their own well-being.
> I'd love to build up a practice with patients like you, but people like you tend to be pretty healthy.
There's also the factor that teaching hospitals tend to get a lot of poor and uneducated patients. Private clinics have a different clientèle, and there are definitely plenty of individuals out there who are not in perfect medical condition, yet are educated/informed enough for doctors to interact with on a higher level than they currently do.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#18More work for less pay huh? Being squeezed by profit taking business people at the top... surely no one other than doctors can relate to such changes in the economy. *Edit I am of course being a bit sarcastic. It's interesting to see how shifts in the general economy are changing the medical profession.
You seem quick to blame the "profit taking business" aspect of this but what about the government regulation and interference in medicine that caused "medicine as big business" to be the only way many doctors could operate. A sole practicioner these days would drown in paperwork and regulatory overhead. Many see their only option as becoming employees of large health care corporations.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going into a career because it's rewarding seems like a mistake?
I think he meant financially.
I think it's a mistake whether for financial reasons or in terms of personal satisfaction. You go into a field because you are interested in learning and engaging with the problems in that field. Not for status or rewards.
You can't enter a profession on the basis that it will be personally rewarding. You can only leave because it turns out not to be.
Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession
#20You can definitely feel this as a patient. If I could give my vitals to an app and have it diagnose and prescribe remedies, I would do it in a heart beat and never visit a doctor again (of course you would need robot surgeons too :). I've never seen a doctor research anything either (although I'm sure they do behind the scenes). They seem to be pulling from whatever information cache they have in their head which I o…
> I've never seen a doctor research anything either That's a little surprising to me. One of the coolest things about practicing medicine today is that I can pull out my phone in front of a patient and find guidelines that I'm not familiar with, medication side-effects, and other point-of-care resources that really do enhance my clinical ability in real-time. Granted, I work in a hospital setting. Maybe it's differen…
How would you feel about IBM's Watson providing a second opinion to help with your care delivery?
Watson thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8237618