A vocal, pie-in-the-sky medical student wonders why physicians are so frustrated with the NHS. Dr. Rant eloquently retorts.
This happens Stateside as well, with the AMSA-brainwashing machine really doing a disservice by insulating medical students from what it’s like to really be a physician in the real world.
Naive idealism is understandable in medical students – after all, the academic world is partially shielded from what’s really going on out there. But I am truly curious to see if their starry eyes can stand the harsh glare of reality.
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{ 11 comments }
Here’s how I saw it: “Alex Thomas” makes a rather sane point that if GPs don’t like their lot in life they should do something else. Dr Rant’s rebuttal is a mixture of ad hominem and sunk-cost fallacy, conspiracy mongering (not to say it isn’t true), and a smattering of crude blow-job innuendo for good measure. Yes, she’s a schoolgirl, which only makes the response of “professionals” that much more sadly embarrassing.
I’m a med student and I am alarmed at how little my peers know. I tried explaining some of the issues Kevin addresses on this blog to one woman, and she looked at me incredulously and said “But a six-figure salary is a lot of money!”
Yeesh. No wonder my bid to start a Business in Medicine student interest group was futile.
I hear ya Zelda. I am a business oriented med student too. My classmates just don’t understand or care to understand.
Also, they make think 100k sounds like a lot right now, but remember that is won’t be in 10-15 years. And it looks like physicians will be getting that same 100k and no more unless they start fighting back. The only thing that gives me comfort is that I am debt free due to a nice educational fund that was set up for me.
Thanks, alexa-blue. In the British system, a typical third or fourth-year medical student is 19 or 20, maybe 21 at the most.
Her opinion may not be appealing to NHS detractors, but I can remember moments in college at that age in which I might have righteously defended the status quo as well. She hasn’t yet time to experience the same system that has driven others to bitterness. A more appropriate response would have been a letter to the Guardian — signed Dr. Rant, of course.
The “unmasking” was crude and inappropriate coming from someone else also using a pseudonym. My guess is that she picked a name because no matter which side she came down on, she’d be torn to pieces by the other side. Although I would have preferred she publish in her own name, she’s junior enough that I can understand why she chose to do so.
Alexa Blue: please cite the passage in Dr. Rant’s reply that you contend is “a smattering of crude blow-job innuendo for good measure.” I read the whole piece and see nothing of the sort.
I DO see the following from the idiot who penned the piece in the Guardian: “”They knew and I know that if they went into my old City firm with the sheer arrogance they display as medical students they would have their bollocks chewed off by lunchtime.”
WHO’S making crude genital allusions??
And speaking of medical student’s arrogance!
And please refrain from defending this moron by claiming that she’s a mere “schoolgirl” I’d be wiling to bet that you would be among the first to scream male chauvinism if I were to refer to a 21 year old medical student as a “schoolgirl.”
Idiots deserve smackdowns. The lack of such is the reason we’re treated to such lunacy in a major newspaper’s editorial column.
Anon 4:55 – I suspect your political sympathies with Dr. Rant have biased you towards a hermeneutic of charity. Not much I can do to change that.
A small quibble — you can chastise me for derogating student doctor Thomas as a “schoolgirl” (and good point! since there’s no evidence offered up that “she” actually is), or you can bet that I would find it appallingly chauvinistic of you to do the same, but you probably ought not do both, for reasons I would think are pretty obvious.
To further comment on what anonymous 4:55 challenged readers to do…here’s a quote from Dr. Rant’s post.
“It appears that Alex likes to swallow the propaganda fed to her by the government propaganda machine, it can be very dangerous to swallow things without checking where they came from first. Next time Alex I suggest that you check what’s between your lips before you gobble it down.”
That’s a smattering of crude blow-job innuendo worthy of The Sun, and I didn’t have to skim for more than a second to find it.
Dr. Rant also mentions this student doctor is in the class of 2011, which probably makes her much closer to 18 than 21. I would cut an 18-year-old male the same amount of slack. She’s expressed an unpopular but coherent opinion on a national stage that can be chalked up to naivety. The post that was linked sinks much further than her original article ever did.
And Alexa I suspect your political sympathies toward the uninformed rants of a “schoolgirl” have biased you toward a hermeneutic of charity as well.
Thanks for the lecture in small quibbles. A small quibble after all is what I had with your post about seeing “blowjob innuendo” in Dr. Rant’s post.
To K (in lieu of the original protest of Alexa- which she does NOT address), if you see that passage as “blow job innuendo” and yet have NO problem whatsoever with this “schoolgirl’s” passage which I cited, then you should ask yourself where you misplaced your keen grasp of the obvious.
Like I stated previously – Idiots deserve smackdowns.
Alexa:
Dr Rant could have been more diplomatic. But the take it or leave it approach by her (and you…”sane”), shows a complete lack of understanding what has happened to primary care. trust me on this, med school does little to nothing to show you about the day to day reality of primary care. I am not talking about the patients, I am talking about the faster and faster treadmill run attitude, medicaid that doesn’t pay enough to cover a visit (and medicare barely covers the visit), insurance company’s that deny study’s, insurance company’s that deny patients bills (for no reason), insurance company’s that “lose things. I can go on and on. Why? Because I LIVED IT. When you have walked in my shoes we can have a “sane” conversation. Otherwise you really don’t have a clue.
PS: though I loved primary care I left IM for fellowship (and my own sanity. Very few IM docs actually do primary care anymore. Please do tell what you are planning on matching in?
Hi Anon 9:44 – I certainly admit to the possibility of misunderstanding (and lack any lived experience), but I suspect the main cause of our disagreement is unshared axioms. I have a low enough opinion of medicine’s intrinsic value (in particular, as practiced by doctors) that the temporary collapse of primary care does not seem to be a particularly threatening consequence. Sure, if PCPs left en masse for concierge practice or administration or interventional cardiology, some patients would suffer adverse consequences and a few would probably die. But people die because we go in to primary care and practice in suburban America rather than distributing bug nets and teaching hygiene to poor Africans, so why would this be any worse? The outrage that Dr. Rant and Kevin feel about the marginalization of the general practioner is not proportionate to the human cost of such policy decisions, but to the amount they stand to lose financially, and I have a very difficult time getting excited about that.
Dear alexa-blue,
wow.
So you believe that if we as a society entirely and completely removed all primary care docs patients on the whole would have few if any adverse reactions? Just a few statistically unimportant deaths to ignore?
So, if there are no primary care docs at all where is the entry point of care?
Oh, wait..it’s the ER right?
So you are saying that I should go to the ER for my referrals to only specialist care is that it?.
You are right, it’s time these specialists started doing some work for that money…I agree, lets can the GPs. let’s do it right now!!!!!
Any specialists accepting new patients?
Oh, wait..you don’t believe that:
“I have a low enough opinion of medicine’s intrinsic value (in particular, as practiced by doctors)”
you believe medicine practiced by doctors has no worth at all.
Congratulations on your good health, obviously you and your entire family have never been ill. That’s amazing.
I recommend you go straight to Tanzania with bug nets….I recommend that you don’t see the doctor prior to leaving and don’t bother with your malaria drugs or your vaccinations, skip the Duquaral too, what’s a little cholera to you? You are bullet proof. And I think the people there would just love it if you came and taught them hygiene. I mean I have been there and witnessed them showering, brushing their teeth,practicing handwashing etc but I am sure you know a much better way of doing it. I bet you are a proud advocate of the new US advertising campaign to provide all those African girls with Tampax and maxi pads so they can leave them in hand dug pits near their villages to attract wild animals.Better they not miss school and instead get attacked by hyena while walking to their hand dug oh so hygienic slit trench filled with bloody tampons.I guess you have some new magical way of digging a trench? Or maybe you have a few billion on hand to build waste removal infrastructure across the Serengeti?
I am sure you could travel to any developing country and never get sick , your well informed opinion about the lack of value in medicine should be really, really helpful when you are distributing bed nets to prevent malaria. That little baby dying from malaria shouldn’t ever be taken to a hospital, the risk would just be too high don’t you agree? I mean what could medicine do for a dying child? Better to just hang that nifty new bed net over them.
Only an arrogant asshole living in the first world would ever have the goddamn gall to deride the importance of medicine.
Obviously you are a damn tourist wherever you go. Try holding the hand of a dying child because there isn’t any Iv tubing and all the antibiotics are used up and the drive to a hospital is eight hours by pick up truck if the weather is good..
Then see the intrinsic fucking value of medicine as practiced by doctors.
sometimes I think most of you are just awful people but I believe primary care docs are the warriors in the system. To dismiss them as expendable means you believe the people they treat are expendable and really the only people that are truly expendable are people like alexa here.
If we must thin the herd she should be first to go.
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