I'll bet that the half of doctors who want out of the profession, are the ones who are exploited by the other half. Naturally the profession wants us to see doctors as selfless workers saving our lives, not as rentiers who are ruining us.
How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
21–30 of 147 posts
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#22[deleted]
> If doctors have the final say on all matters, they don't have a patient - they have a subject.
"Extremist language" indeed, and true only in cases where the doctor can forbid the patient from going to another doctor.
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#23The biggest problem is just the AMA. They limit the number of doctors in America, so there are just too few. This drives up the salaries for the few doctors who live the tell the tale (but certainly don't want to go into primary care, when other more lucrative jobs are on offer), and drives up the hours for everyone. Making it easier to become a doctor would improve things immediately (especially given the recent res…
could you expand
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#24I don't get why overworked personnel aren't regarded as a dire safety issue. There's a reason the FAA restricted the number of hours commercial pilots are allowed to fly per week without rest. http://www.usatoday.com/story/todayinthesky/2014/01/03/pilot... I met a resident the other day, and they routinely get four hours of sleep or less and worked for shifts that are insanely long that are basically dictated by pati…
One solid reason is the same reason sleep deprivation is used in basic training. Most doctors, will, at some point in their life, have to make life and death decisions when they're operating far from 100% ... or at least that was true back in the days when they'd take calls at any hour of the day (as late as the '70s). Less dire, they have office hours they must keep unless they're really sick, and they certainly won't be at 100% every day.
So this is useful training, albeit at a cost. Although if they make a mistake that kills a patient during residency and learn they can't deal with the consequences of that, I suppose the earlier the better. They can of course move to less life and death specialties.
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#25The biggest problem is just the AMA. They limit the number of doctors in America, so there are just too few. This drives up the salaries for the few doctors who live the tell the tale (but certainly don't want to go into primary care, when other more lucrative jobs are on offer), and drives up the hours for everyone. Making it easier to become a doctor would improve things immediately (especially given the recent res…
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Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#26[deleted]
> If doctors have the final say on all matters, they don't have a patient - they have a subject.
In a competitive market of doctors, profit motive will tend to cause doctors to meet the demands of patients.
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#27I don't get why overworked personnel aren't regarded as a dire safety issue. There's a reason the FAA restricted the number of hours commercial pilots are allowed to fly per week without rest. http://www.usatoday.com/story/todayinthesky/2014/01/03/pilot... I met a resident the other day, and they routinely get four hours of sleep or less and worked for shifts that are insanely long that are basically dictated by pati…
It's extremely difficult to study the effects of sleep deprivation on the rate of medical error, but several studies have shown that the highest numbers of medical errors occur during handoffs between shifts. Reducing the frequency of those handoffs by increasing shift length reduces the total number of detectable medical errors.
Additionally, the work hour restrictions placed on residents over the last few years appear to have done nothing to reduce the overall number of medical errors.
(I am in favor of reducing medical work hours myself, but these are some of the data-driven reasons that it will be very difficult, not to mention the structural reasons inherent to the current system of medical training.)
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#28This is completely a story of industry structure and bad incentives, and how people react to them. Currently, in the United States, we believe all of the following things: (1) Human physicians, are the only qualified parties to diagnose, treat, and/or recommend courses of action related to health (not nurses, physician's assistants, computer programs, etc.), (2) everyone has a fundamental right to healthcare, (3) hea…
> give medical professionals more operational and financial freedom to run their practices using tried-and-true free-market principles I agree completely, but you forgot to add under what we believe: (5) "government has the solution for everything." At least that's what it feels like lately. The cynic in me says that the healthcare industry will continue to get worse for some time before it gets better, if ever. We m…
In countries with socialized healthcare systems, costs are much lower, as is the overall amount spent on healthcare.
Americans actually display stunning recalcitrance towards this fact, and as a result we have an incredibly polarized debate which has led to a bastardized and amalgamated system comprised of several other, and often conflicting, constructs.
Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#29Re: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession
#30In Canada our GPs are paid approximately $31 for a regular visit. They pay their overhead out of this $31 and still typically keep 65-70% of their billings. It's amazing that the billing costs in the US are a factor of magnitude higher.
I wonder how salaries for nurses and doctors compare in the US vs Canada. Do you happen to have any data on that (or know of a good government source for it in Canada)?
I know that compared to much of first world Europe, our nurses and doctors often make two to four times as much as their counter parts there. Wonder if that's true compared to Canada as well.