So... because the supply of doctors is restricted but demand for doctors grows proportionally to the population, the amount of work per doctor gradually increases and doctors, persuaded by their ethical obligation of care, put up with it as long as possible until they snap.
Yeah?
I just recently had a friend completely burn out of medicine, sell his house, and start traveling the world. He was brilliant, a good doctor, a good person. It's a shame he's been driven out, and so many others.
I also recently had the experience of seeing a young doctor bright-eyed and busy-tailed treat me once, and then six months later see him again. The toll that those six months took on him was visible. He was just about haggard with the work. It's easy to imagine he won't last long.
I feel there's an interesting parallel with teaching. Teaching and medicine both have licensure requirements, both have a strong appeal to people who care and want to make a difference in the lives of children/patients. And in both cases the profession is gradually being taken over by administrators and subject to increasingly onerous regulations.
I also recently had a friend burn out of teaching. She's set to work in a completely unrelated industry now. She put up with crap for a long time due to her care for the children, but at last she couldn't take it.
My libertarian side says these are two improperly functioning markets, with massive human casualties. It's a shame.
This is what I felt when I read the article. It was surprised even the Australian system is just as overloaded as our American system. I feel like a lot of these problems could be deal with if there were simply more doctors.
That being said, it's a difficult profession. Not a lot of people want to do it. Even fewer in such specialised positions as surgery, where mistakes literally cost people lives. There's no rolling back to a previous release or taking a break. Everything that happens, happen on that table with that body open.
Tack on the insane costs, at least in America, for going to school to be a doctor and you also have a situation where few people feel they can afford to be GPs (even though that might be what they really want to be; and the world needs more GPs desperately) and you also have doctors who are now locked into a profession to simply paid their debts.
> I just recently had a friend completely burn out of medicine, sell his house, and start traveling the world.
The high cost of medical school seems directly related to the restriction on the number of physicians. Because only N seats are available whereas maybe 10*N seats would be desired in a free labor market, each school can charge immensely for each seat. The most idealistic will still be willing to apply and take on the debt.
Of course, I'm no expert in this stuff, this is just my hot take. I'm sure it's hugely more complicated.
I don't think a sabbatical is a bad thing at all. But this is more than that, and it's driven by burnout rather than a simple desire for refresh and reflection. That's what I think is negative here.
>That being said, it's a difficult profession. Not a lot of people want to do it. Even fewer in such specialised positions as surgery, where mistakes literally cost people lives. There's no rolling back to a previous release or taking a break. Everything that happens, happen on that table with that body open.
I recommend reading "When Breath Becomes Air". The author's friend (a general surgeon) has a patient die on the table. He goes into great emotional distress, eventually committing suicide.
Brilliant, good hearted people being pushed to self destruction. Not the way an industry should want to behave.
A lot of physicians either push to restrict the supply of docs or look at this "issue" and do nothing about it. They do not want their wages to decrease by opening up the market (have had physician friends say this to me in words that make it sound less terrible).
Cuba decided they wanted more physicians, so they invested in them to the point that they could use them as an export. If we have a shortage of doctors (which I think we do), the people with the power to change that either don't believe we have a shortage or have a vested interest in keeping a shortage.
Bingo. Medicine isn't inherently a particularly hard course of study, and in many countries is just a five or six year university degree similar to a master's level degree in engineering.
It is, however, subject to stricter licensing/certification constraints which are mostly in the hands of the existing body of practitioners ...
Anecdote but I've worked with many MDs in my career and most of them very publicly express an "I got mine" attitude and scoff at any attempt to increase numbers or make the process less crushing
Non-scalable work, where tools multiply worker effectiveness linerarly/constant (everything else).
It is a little bit of a Taleb's world where exponentials live side by side normal distribution.
Scalable work is much more profitable than linear work. Where I work, being scaleable is a requirement. If it is not scaleable, we are not doing it.
This creates incentive to make everything scaleable. Which is a big problem for those whose work is inherently linear: teachers, doctors, waiters. They get put in optimization straightjackets for marginal improvement. And it sucks the soul of what they do. It makes world a less happy place, filled with 15min doctor appointments, restaurants where tables must be turned every 2 hours for profitability, etc.
The compound problem for doctors has been that they have to perform highly creative, high impact tasks while inside the optimization straighjacket. That's got to hurt.
Yeah?
I just recently had a friend completely burn out of medicine, sell his house, and start traveling the world. He was brilliant, a good doctor, a good person. It's a shame he's been driven out, and so many others.
I also recently had the experience of seeing a young doctor bright-eyed and busy-tailed treat me once, and then six months later see him again. The toll that those six months took on him was visible. He was just about haggard with the work. It's easy to imagine he won't last long.
I feel there's an interesting parallel with teaching. Teaching and medicine both have licensure requirements, both have a strong appeal to people who care and want to make a difference in the lives of children/patients. And in both cases the profession is gradually being taken over by administrators and subject to increasingly onerous regulations.
I also recently had a friend burn out of teaching. She's set to work in a completely unrelated industry now. She put up with crap for a long time due to her care for the children, but at last she couldn't take it.
My libertarian side says these are two improperly functioning markets, with massive human casualties. It's a shame.