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The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

drericlevi.substack.com

211–220 of 521 posts

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should enforce rigorous qualifications for doctors. We've relaxed the standards far too much already.

We do not need all doctors to be uber doctors. We need a range of doctors, who range in price according to quality . That way for simple stuff, which anyone can get right, we go to a cheap, reasonable doctor. A similar example would be if we only had uber software engineers. Each one had to have a PhD. There were no cheap and okay developers who could do say web-sites but not write a programming language from scratch…

Lol. Vary by price? This screams USA. Cost, even of labour, is very much disconnected from patient outcomes.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#212
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Switzerland, at least for the french part, most of the doctors are not Swiss anymore. It literally became white collar immigrant job. Wife is one of those and sees the problem very clearly due to speaking about this with both (those few) swiss colleagues and the rest - its simply not attractive career path for locals, too much suffering and risk for relatively little reward. Those bright enough go to law, IT and s…

Potentially controversial opinion, but perhaps it is exactly the immigrants who are enabling the dysfunction to continue? I imagine tougher decisions would have been made to balance doctor quality of life with patient outcomes without immigrants taking whatever abuse the current system throws at them.

If you allow the capital class to import new workers when the current batch get too “uppity”, why would you expect conditions to improve?

This is happening across society, and I consider it a tragedy the people focused on race and sex have taken all the oxygen out of the room for a much needed discussion on class.

I’d even go so far as to say it’s encouraged (eg, BlockRock ESG) as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy by the capital class.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should enforce rigorous qualifications for doctors. We've relaxed the standards far too much already.

We do not need all doctors to be uber doctors. We need a range of doctors, who range in price according to quality . That way for simple stuff, which anyone can get right, we go to a cheap, reasonable doctor. A similar example would be if we only had uber software engineers. Each one had to have a PhD. There were no cheap and okay developers who could do say web-sites but not write a programming language from scratch…

Well what we are learning is that we don’t need doctors for the simple stuff. The doctors cap honestly make sense. We have a surplus of generalists who still do not understand the body systematically, so the demand is not there

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#215
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d rather have three well-rested people and an additional shift change than two burned out, exhausted people. People who are exhausted make mistakes. Maybe it would be better to focus on improving internal communication.

Rounding is a major source of mistakes. It is very common that cases rounded through multiple people develop major gaps in information. This is not as simple of a problem as you think it is.

I feel like technology could very easily solve this eventually

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not need all doctors to be uber doctors. We need a range of doctors, who range in price according to quality . That way for simple stuff, which anyone can get right, we go to a cheap, reasonable doctor. A similar example would be if we only had uber software engineers. Each one had to have a PhD. There were no cheap and okay developers who could do say web-sites but not write a programming language from scratch…

Well what we are learning is that we don’t need doctors for the simple stuff. The doctors cap honestly make sense. We have a surplus of generalists who still do not understand the body systematically, so the demand is not there

If the demand is not there, why is a cap required?

If the demand is there, why is a cap imposed?

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#217
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which does not have artificial restrictions on the supply of doctors to the same extent Yes it does. One of the really interesting questions is actually why the same problems have been created in so many otherwise-different systems. Edit: a post giving details on the Australian medical training constraints https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_depart...

> > to the same extent Your source says that the government sets (indirectly) a limit on the number of places at most public universities, but there are private, full-fee universities that are not so limited. Internship slots, in turn, are set by disparate government agencies. They've climbed, but probably not climbed enough. Compare to the US, where congress basically directly controls the number of residency slots…

This is just wrong. The supply is absolutely artificially capped, particularly for positions like surgeons. This is controlled by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in combination with government funding. There is no “private, full-fee universities that are not so limited” alternate path; don’t make stuff up. Source: Brother in law who is a surgeon.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not need all doctors to be uber doctors. We need a range of doctors, who range in price according to quality . That way for simple stuff, which anyone can get right, we go to a cheap, reasonable doctor. A similar example would be if we only had uber software engineers. Each one had to have a PhD. There were no cheap and okay developers who could do say web-sites but not write a programming language from scratch…

Lol. Vary by price? This screams USA. Cost, even of labour, is very much disconnected from patient outcomes.

I would say to you that in the normal case, in general, across all fields - bicycles, clothing, tables, chocolate, holidays, houses, butlers, what-have-you - cost is related to outcome, and this is what would be expected.

In the normal case, I would then think that cost in medicine and medical services would be related to outcome.

To the extent this generalization is true, then when cost is not related to outcome, this is not a normal situation, and then the question would be "why?" - what's going on to make a situation which on the face of it is not normal.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#219
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An associated problem is that bright people from rural or poor areas who are really passionate about being a doctor dont get the right grades to get in. Middle class kids in cities get in because its a good career but dont really like it that much and definitely dont want to work outside their city. My brother worked as a doctor until his thirties then quit, such a waste of training.

We should enforce rigorous qualifications for doctors. We've relaxed the standards far too much already.

Sure, but no doctors is worse than lower skilled doctors as even lower skilled doctors are better than the average patient self-treatment attempt.

We need doctors who are available to treat simple conditions and refer to a more qualified doctor for the complex ones. Such a job doesn't require being a genius, just people who are not complete idiots, and the qualifications required here are genius-level, not idiotproof-level.

Re: The darker side of being a doctor (2017)

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounding is a major source of mistakes. It is very common that cases rounded through multiple people develop major gaps in information. This is not as simple of a problem as you think it is.

I feel like technology could very easily solve this eventually

Only if you think it's possible to get all of the information in someone's head out of their head without consuming significantly more of their time and energy.
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