The general public has no sympathy for physicians with regard to their finances or hours. Most people would be willing to see a gorilla with a white lab coat on if there was no co-pay and the care was free. Until Americans start waiting in line to see physicians or start dropping dead from waiting so long, the American public and the federal government(Medicare) will not pay attention to our woes.
An Anonymous MD

Physician logic never ceases to amaze.

Anyone who truly has lived on $25K a year, and has a choice to endure a few more headaches and some more work and make on average 6 times that would never elect the former.

Residency [ specialty ] training programs are closely tied into hospital economic policy. During the 1950-1985 period, and perhaps even today, training programs, even in some university hospitals, were run by private practice groups.

It was the philosophy of chairmen of many programs that during a three to four year intensive training stint-being on call every other night meant that you still “Missed half of the good cases.”

There is much truth to this philosophy. Medicine is one field where much of what the doctor learns comes ‘after hours’ and much of what I learned during my training years 1977-1983 in internship and residency could not have been learned 9 to 5.Nor can it be condensed into one or two years, especially now, where much of the ‘pathology’ has “Dried up.”

As an example of this statement ask yourselves how many chief surgical residents do 700-1000 cases a year-as it was in the ‘old days’? How many ENT trainees get to drill out an infected mastoid or actually see cholesteatoma’s? Not many-and these examples can be applied across all specialties-by way of illustration.

By the same token, a fair amount of the residents time in training is ‘wasted’ with non-medical duties. However; one could argue strongly that these duties do help to contour the learning experience.

Ultimately, doctors ‘age’ like fine wines. Learning is a plateau-like step wise process. We know that.

How much do we ‘deserve’ to make? I don’t know. Is Alex Rodriguez really worth 100 million dollars?
The answer is that people will pay big bucks for what they deem to be of value to them. Does this mean we should treat people on retainer fees?

I still read two hours daily, three or four times a week, all the literature I can get hold of pertaining to my specialty interests. I do it for two reasons. First of all, I love it. Second of all, it helps me to make better clinical judgements.

It doesn’t, never did, or ever will, translate out to salary equivalents-and it should not.

We are doctors-not businessmen. We probably should never have originally accepted assignment. We got tired of people paying what they could afford so we made sure we got a check from Uncle Sam.

Now they control the purse-string and dictate to us how to do our jobs.

You can’t even opt out without going through a myriad of ‘hoop jumping.’

The profession has, in some ways, been selfish. We are a service profession and most of us enjoy our work enough to keep doing it regardless of how much money we make.

Thats the way it should be-and when we show the public that we are in it for them-not ourselves- we’ll get back the measure of respect we do deserve.

I wish to commend you on an excellent post. Unlike the typical self-serving crack pipe arrogant rot that passes for “informed” commentary, your manner of response and more importantly, the content contained therein are worthy of a cogent response. As I have a moment this day I will respond accordingly.

anon 11:52