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Check out the comments over on /r/medicine and you will likely be horrified. It is career over everything. There was even a thread this week about how you shoul

Check out the comments over on /r/medicine and you will likely be horrified. It is career over everything. There was even a thread this week about how you should NEVER correct someone above you (med students should never correct a resident and a resident should never correct an attending). That mentality is terrible for everyone and every thing, except the physicians' careers. I don't know if we need to select for better people when admitting them to medical school or if the culture is just completely fucked.

theatrus2 8y ago
Such practices were pervasive in other industries too, including air crews. Thankfully, this has been changing, and shown marked improvement in some cases.
Spooky23 8y ago
It’s a tough profession populated with type-a people, paid by insurance companies and beholden to malpractice insurers as well. As with anything in modern society, bean counters rule and usually drive awful decision making.
bradlys 8y ago
If you think about what it takes to get into med school then it seems pretty natural that you're going to get hyper competitive surgeons in the end. It starts before med school. You get assigned 10 unobtainable books that only the library has. Finals week comes around, all the books are missing even though they have to stay in the library. Turns out your classmates hid them inside the library so they could have a competitive advantage and get a higher grade on the curve. You already devoted probably half your life to becoming a surgeon, why would you screw it up and lose so much ground so easily?
- carbocation 8y ago
  What decade are you describing? In my medical school, all of the required material aside from our anatomy textbook was given to us as a PDF or a printout.
  - bradlys 8y ago
    This was within the last 7 years. I don't doubt each school is different. This was at UW in Seattle.
- WalterSear 8y ago
  Hyper competitive, conformist surgeons.
loceng 8y ago
Yes, the system is horrendous and broken. There should be complete oversight and full transparency for self-regulation purposes, which includes ongoing learning and education, and get lawyers involved once the self-regulating is found to be inadequate - such as a surgeon who repeatedly makes the same mistakes and hasn't bothered to learn or care to improve their skills, or prevented from continuing. From my own struggles of trying to find healing for chronic pain I have, I have realized that doctors/professionals are selected for for their memorization and not for critical thinking skills.
- salawat 8y ago
  This is one thing that still amazes me to this day. It's like doctor's stop thinking after they get their degree. Whenever I've visited a doc within the past few years I have noticed that instead of actually getting to know someone as a patient, many act as if they are a quick reference book. This is especially horrifying when you consider that there is a non-trivial portion of the population that exist outside of the medical literature. Every one of the best Doctors I've ever had has ALWAYS been a researcher at heart. They observe, take notes, treat what they can now, and come back later and can clue me in on the latest research they've come across. Nowadays, I'm usually making Doctors aware of advancements in their field... Scary stuff.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    > Nowadays, I'm usually making Doctors aware of advancements in their field... Scary stuff. Are you taking about your cases? Because keeping on top of the narrow score that's currently relevant to you is a different level of time investment than keeping on top of everything happening in the field, after already learning a large part of it, and keeping in mind current treating guidelines which lag behind research.
    - salawat 8y ago
      Alright, I'll concede that one. I admit, things become a lot simpler once you limit your scope to issues immediately relevant to you as a patient. However, I do still believe that when made aware of something new from a patient, a good physician should actively tackle the topic if only to be able to give a realistic assessment of where it falls on the risk/outcome spectrum. NOTE: This may be assuming an above average level of patient investment. I in no way condone of wasting a physician's time having them wade through quackery. Nobody has time for that.
user5994461 8y ago
There were similar articles for developers on Hacker News and on /r/programming over the week end.

theatrus2 8y ago

Such practices were pervasive in other industries too, including air crews. Thankfully, this has been changing, and shown marked improvement in some cases.

Spooky23 8y ago

It’s a tough profession populated with type-a people, paid by insurance companies and beholden to malpractice insurers as well. As with anything in modern society, bean counters rule and usually drive awful decision making.

bradlys 8y ago

If you think about what it takes to get into med school then it seems pretty natural that you're going to get hyper competitive surgeons in the end. It starts before med school. You get assigned 10 unobtainable books that only the library has. Finals week comes around, all the books are missing even though they have to stay in the library. Turns out your classmates hid them inside the library so they could have a competitive advantage and get a higher grade on the curve. You already devoted probably half your life to becoming a surgeon, why would you screw it up and lose so much ground so easily?

carbocation 8y ago
What decade are you describing? In my medical school, all of the required material aside from our anatomy textbook was given to us as a PDF or a printout.
- bradlys 8y ago
  This was within the last 7 years. I don't doubt each school is different. This was at UW in Seattle.
WalterSear 8y ago
Hyper competitive, conformist surgeons.

loceng 8y ago

Yes, the system is horrendous and broken. There should be complete oversight and full transparency for self-regulation purposes, which includes ongoing learning and education, and get lawyers involved once the self-regulating is found to be inadequate - such as a surgeon who repeatedly makes the same mistakes and hasn't bothered to learn or care to improve their skills, or prevented from continuing. From my own struggles of trying to find healing for chronic pain I have, I have realized that doctors/professionals are selected for for their memorization and not for critical thinking skills.

salawat 8y ago
This is one thing that still amazes me to this day. It's like doctor's stop thinking after they get their degree. Whenever I've visited a doc within the past few years I have noticed that instead of actually getting to know someone as a patient, many act as if they are a quick reference book. This is especially horrifying when you consider that there is a non-trivial portion of the population that exist outside of the medical literature. Every one of the best Doctors I've ever had has ALWAYS been a researcher at heart. They observe, take notes, treat what they can now, and come back later and can clue me in on the latest research they've come across. Nowadays, I'm usually making Doctors aware of advancements in their field... Scary stuff.
- viraptor 8y ago
  > Nowadays, I'm usually making Doctors aware of advancements in their field... Scary stuff. Are you taking about your cases? Because keeping on top of the narrow score that's currently relevant to you is a different level of time investment than keeping on top of everything happening in the field, after already learning a large part of it, and keeping in mind current treating guidelines which lag behind research.
  - salawat 8y ago
    Alright, I'll concede that one. I admit, things become a lot simpler once you limit your scope to issues immediately relevant to you as a patient. However, I do still believe that when made aware of something new from a patient, a good physician should actively tackle the topic if only to be able to give a realistic assessment of where it falls on the risk/outcome spectrum. NOTE: This may be assuming an above average level of patient investment. I in no way condone of wasting a physician's time having them wade through quackery. Nobody has time for that.

user5994461 8y ago

There were similar articles for developers on Hacker News and on /r/programming over the week end.