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Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

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Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#101

Post by sparky_z »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #26
sparky_z wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will say that there's definitely a hazing culture across all professions in America that's completely unnecessary and inappropriate." I'm a structural engineer. I don't recall any sort of hazing culture, or even a single instance of hazing.

Where did you do your internship, and what were you asked to do there? How many hours did you work and study while in school? Were you expected to work much longer hours as a junior employee to "work your way up the ranks? I think these are the sorts of elements of a hazing culture that GP is discussing. Not necessarily fraternity-prank style hazing.

Actually, I didn't personally encounter anything like that, but I now have a better idea of what you meant and agree it's not unheard of.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#102

Post by rifung »

kcanini wrote: post #48
rifung wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend in med school and his experience doesn't sound like tech hiring at all. From what I can tell, med school isn't hard because of rent seeking, but because there is frankly just a very large amount of things you have to learn in a short amount of time. They also have to work extremely long hours on certain rotations. I was shocked at how little sleep he could get on some days. On the other hand, he seems…

Doctors do go through an accreditation process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Medical_Licensin...

The person I was replying to mentioned that some other countries don't have an accreditation board. I was trying to imply that I approve of its existence, not that there isn't one. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#103

Post by jfoutz »

frozenport wrote: post #90
catscratch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of today's US med school students admitted in 2016 were born in 1992. They grew up watching the silly kids and stupid parents sit-com world of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon while getting soccer trophies for showing up. They wasted a lot of time playing non-educational games rather than reading or working hard to accomplish real things. While they had to work incredibly hard to get into medical school, a…

I can't tell if this sarcastic, but I think its important to point out that much of the challenge and stress of US medical school is self inflicted by the current culture - and leads to bad health outcomes for patients.

I only have a very shallow understanding. I think the term 'resident' comes from actually living at the hospital. A resident was expected to care for a single patient from beginning to end. They needed to be available at all times to handle that specific patient's needs.

There are deep challenges with continuity of care. How does one person hand of treatment to another person?

Imagine you and I are both working on a project. There's only one computer, you use it from 6AM to 6PM, I use it from 6PM to 6AM. We can only work on one feature at a time. How do we coordinate that handoff every day? That alone sounds like a huge pain. With a doctor, everything can super time critical, and requires just as much depth of understanding. You may have a an understanding of something that i didn't understand in the handoff. building a project, we roll back my code talk some more and do better the next day. With doctors, maybe somebody dies.

I know it's a convoluted example. I imagine most stuff is routine and can be passed around safely. But it's only routine until it isn't, and there's no way to know up front. As much as developers hate being treated like cogs, it seems like it would make doctors lives quite a bit easier. Just seems like a super hard problem. And if you don't get it right people could die. So, like, that sucks.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#104

Post by Spooky23 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #46
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much longer until programming is the same way, now that we're pushing it to every kid and idolizing tech billionaires?

From what I've heard, the vast majority of people just can't understand the kind of thinking required to be a programmer. The rate of application to Computer Science programs has increased, but it has the highest dropout rate among other subjects, which is said to be because of the problem of programming requiring a certain predisposition. One of a few articles on the subject: https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating…

I disagree with that. I think the quality of CS education is pathetic.

I've been an adjunct instructor at a local university, and they hire industry people because they don't have enough grad students who can teach or don't speak English sufficiently to teach. The kids are great and can do anything, but they are stuck in a brain dead curriculum that's designed to haze them out before their junior year.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#105

Post by logicallee »

jimmywanger wrote: post #31
logicallee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you put your conclusion first, and I must say I disagreed with it when I read your first couples of lines. Because medicine is actually hard - it's not that students have to "go through hell because that's what they had to go through." Medicine is really hard. I have a condition that affects my lifestyle, I have to learn about it, the more I learn the better my outcome. I'm not studying medicine and only "have to" le…

I don't disagree with medicine being hard. I'm not going to get into the difference difficulty between learning medicine or computer science. I guess I should have mentioned my point first, which is that just like you don't need a star computer scientist to write an app for a restaurant, you don't need a doctor with all that training and theoretical knowledge to diagnose a sprained ankle. I'm sorry about your conditi…

Regarding the rarety of my condition, it's diabetes treated with insulin, so not rare by any stretch of the imagination. With a positive diagnosis and in a fairly uncomplicated case, it's a huge burden on me to learn just the single condition. Now imagine doctors who don't have to deal with only a single, well-diagnosed condition.

You say that a "sprained ankle" is easy to diagnose -- but is it really? On the differential, how many other conditions manifest similarly? What complications can a trained doctor see, what questions do they know to ask?

In my interaction with the medical industry, in no case would I have been as well-served by a "lesser expert."

Regarding the term rent-seeking. This is quite a specific term, that means causing payment to be made for something that would be free. For example, if I opened an institute to monitor air quality and make recommendations, and managed to get the government to force everyone to pay an "air tax" for my endeavors -- this is "rent-seeking", since, of course, air can be enjoyed without paying for it.

From how I read your comment, you did not intend this usage. Rather, you meant to speak about the supply of trained doctors (not to speak about something that might be free otherwise), so it is more cartel-like behavior, at least as far as I read your argument.

I assume you still want the lesser experts we're discussing to be regulated legally, etc, and weren't comparing with "free" opinions such as if I ask an aunt about herbal medicines that have worked for her. If the latter, then, sure, I would say it is rent-seeking to start charging people to discuss herbal medicines for which discussion is otherwise free.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#106

Post by catscratch »

jfoutz wrote: post #103
frozenport wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this sarcastic, but I think its important to point out that much of the challenge and stress of US medical school is self inflicted by the current culture - and leads to bad health outcomes for patients.

I only have a very shallow understanding. I think the term 'resident' comes from actually living at the hospital. A resident was expected to care for a single patient from beginning to end. They needed to be available at all times to handle that specific patient's needs. There are deep challenges with continuity of care. How does one person hand of treatment to another person? Imagine you and I are both working on a…

You meant to reply to a different comment?

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#107

Post by jfoutz »

catscratch wrote: post #106
jfoutz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have a very shallow understanding. I think the term 'resident' comes from actually living at the hospital. A resident was expected to care for a single patient from beginning to end. They needed to be available at all times to handle that specific patient's needs. There are deep challenges with continuity of care. How does one person hand of treatment to another person? Imagine you and I are both working on a…

You meant to reply to a different comment?

Vague, long winded, round about way of saying, maybe it's not self inflicted. Continuity of care is hard. Maybe fewer patients or other responsibilities would help. Ultimately, in my shallow understanding, residents just sort of have to be there to take care of their patients, because passing patients around is dangerous.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#108

Post by rifung »

wyager wrote: post #35
rifung wrote: post #5

> . Fortunately, others are speaking up as well. In online magazines and on NPR, medical students who have lived through suicide attempts, depression and other mental-health issues are standing up against this stigma. Medical schools are now training faculty to recognize risk factors for suicide and assuring students that seeking help isn’t a sign of weakness. I wonder whether and hope that mental illness will end up…

> especially when it comes to employment discrimination I mean, a lot of mental illnesses actually have a legitimate negative effect on one's ability to be a productive worker. It wouldn't really make sense to make it illegal to discriminate against people with e.g. severe learning disabilities who can't read or write.

> I mean, a lot of mental illnesses actually have a legitimate negative effect on one's ability to be a productive worker.

Yes I completely agree. However, if a mentally ill person can perform their duties with reasonable accommodations as well as a person who isn't mentally ill , then that person shouldn't be discriminated against.

Indeed, the Americans with Disabilities Act already covers people with depression and bipolar.

If you could discriminate against people because they have something which legitimately negatively affects one's ability to be a productive worker, then companies would probably discriminate against hiring women too, because they might get pregnant and have to take time off. This is also illegal because while it's true that it might be less efficient for the company, it's still unethical.

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#109

Post by Spooky23 »

jimmywanger wrote: post #66
Lordarminius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When has that happened to you, or anybody you've known? Are you kidding me? I practiced medicine until 8 months ago when I burned out and had to take a break. One of the cases I recall having on an offshore medical center, involved 4 victims who had suffered burns(in one case over 80% of his body surface area), on a night when I had 2 other patients on admission. It easily took my team of four 5 hours to stabilize…

In these incidents, how many times did you have to reach on your advanced medical training instead of the basic ones to treat burn wounds and fix food poisoning? How was any aspect of your job improved by your years of medical school, your years of residency? Would you rather have more less trained doctors, or fewer elite doctors in those circumstances?

Would you prefer to go to a medical office with your kid presenting a serious condition and get a paramedic who doesn't know what to do outside of his protocols?

Re: Medical school can be brutal, and it’s making many of us suicidal

#110

Post by nugget »

gnu8 wrote: post #95
pjlegato wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that capitalism as such has much to do with the problem you describe, as anyone who ever went to a Soviet emergency room will be happy to tell you.

The Soviet healthcare system suffered from underinvestment due to their command economy's focus on heavy industry and military production. The problem in the United States is the exact opposite: unproductive overinvestment due to the proliferation of waste, fraud, rent-seekers, and all other types of interests that rake a profit off the top without contributing anything to patient care. It seems like a false argument…

I believe pjlegato's point was that while idealism may attract many students into medicine, it's ultimately the profit motive that keeps them working 60+ hour weeks and taking call for decades.

I have a few physicians in my extended family and this mirrors what I've seen from them; I don't know how you'd get board certified neurosurgeons to take q3 trauma call in more rural areas for years on end other than ''here's a boatload of money''. It's masochistic work.

Capitalism, especially our current flavor of it, has plenty of problems, but I think it's important to separate the core principals (mostly free markets, pursuit of self interest) from the pollutants (loopholes, cronyism and special interests).

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