Medicine today

This is an interesting article on where our new doctors are coming from. The med student that wrote this comes from a medical family and she hits a number of good points.

My dad was a doctor and all bias assumed he was a damn good one. He did a lot of good work in medicine and paid the price for it. Once he recovered from his drinking issues he went on to help found impaired physicians programs in three states in New England. Through all of this he never once pushed me toward medicine. I was always good with mechanical stuff and computers so I wanted to into Engineering. I could have mix this with Bio-Med or something to do with healthcare but I had spent too much time listening to Dad talk about the fall of medicine and how insurance companies and the government were destroying the medical field. He would tell me how you had to keep in mind that the insurance folks would second guess your tests and treatment, and the Feds were watching what you prescribed. I didn’t want to work for Big Brother.

In the end I think he was glad I didn’t go into medicine for a living. I know he talked me out of it. I saw what he went through and said “nope, not for me” I wanted to have time with my family and a good nights sleep. I wasn’t ready to deal with the 3AM call from the hospital asking if Mrs. Jones can use the bathroom and other such nonsense that he had to deal with. (Nothing against the nurses that called, I know every has to cover their back with the law suits these days)

You can see in the story that she faced some of the same issues yet still went into medicine. . . I wish her the best of luck because without people like her I think we would be running out of doctors in the near future thanks to the hoops you jump through now in the healthcare system