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In reply to the discussion: How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession [View all]nolabear
(42,042 posts)Mr. Bear's family is full of doctors, surgeons to be precise. His father was a pioneer in surgeries that you are glad exist today. They make an excellent living and have considerable perks and social position, after many years of school and work. But they work, and worked, trauma. Family stories are rife with leaving holiday dinners to try to save the people who piled up on the highway, or whose Christmas trees caught fire, or who just plain got drunk and shot one another, and coming home and pacing and calling repeatedly to find out if they had helped someone's child not die. Long term relationships with patients frequently end with death, terribly altered lives and the alternate gratitude and rage of patients and families. They know more than anyone that they are human, and imperfect, and can just do the best they can.
They also teach, work to pass legislation, deal with constant changes as they try to keep up with research advances, manage staff drama, and did I mention that people often die?
And then there's the kind of generalized hatred that people who, for some reason, fire shotgun-like at them. They do read, you know. They do see how much the competent and incompetent (and they crusade against incompetence) are viewed all together, and how much people seem to believe they are inhuman, money-grubbing machines even as they work stretches that would put ME into a state of mild psychosis.
My f-i-l used to throw a party every August on the first day his income wasn't going for taxes.
I don't dismiss any criticisms leveled, but believe me, the reasons for doctors being stressed aren't new, and the people who go into the profession thinking it's an easy buck are quickly disabused of that notion or genuine are hacks who should get out. But it's hardly the majority. Even for hacks, it ain't that easy.