Great article on how physicians are conditioned to bend over and take it during their training. Too often, that continues into the real world, where physicians’ lack of business sense and their “learned helplessness” puts them at a real disadvantage:

Young physicians become so well trained in deferring gratification that many give up on ever getting any meaningful rewards for their sacrifices. With their resilience worn away, many just give up the fight. A dispirited acceptance of one’s individual fate seems to be the dominant mood of physicians nowadays rather than a motivated mobilization toward a better lot for the individual practitioner and the profession as a whole. Most doctors focus so hard on trying to provide good patient care — ie, taking care of others — that they forget, or have no energy, to take care of themselves. Thus, when some doctors propose positive collective action, they are usually quickly quieted by a few naysayers whose negativity taps into the helplessness learned so well during medical training. The progress of the profession is being effectively paralyzed by its own failure to teach leadership and the skills of self-survival.

(via The Medical Quack)