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So really, saying that medicine is a service industry means nothing about whether or not we should be a "customer service" driven industry in the way that medicine has been taken (not to say we shouldn't try to satisfy patients, but that in and of itself is not what medicine is about). And you were wrong, Burger King and car salesmen ARE part of the service industry.
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Nope, not wrong -- your interpretation is. Speaking as someone coming from the corporate service sector, a "service industry" is a term of art -- I'm not concerned with a dictionary definition you happened to find although it does say medicine is a service industry -- it's actually a bad definition if it lumps wholesale/retail trade into services rather than goods. I'm using the phrase as it's used throughout the business world (your encyclopedia entry notwithstanding).
It absolutely DOES mean a customer driven business. And yes, medicine is such a business, like law, consulting, etc. Burger King or a car dealership is NOT such a business -- they certainly have service components to their business, but they are selling GOODS. There is a very big difference in the business world between selling goods and selling services, because of what the customer is seeking and expecting. If you are a seller of goods, you can often have lousy service but if the product is superior you will still do well. For example, many people think poorly of used car salesmen, but they stay in business if they give good deals on acceptable products. And fast food places usually hire the cheapest, least experienced individuals possible to cook and work the register, but people still flock to Burger King despite the lack of emphasis on service because they like the taste, the price, etc.
If your product that you are selling IS the services, however, rather than a car or a hamburger, this is not the same thing. People go to a doctor to be examined, advised, counseled. Basically you bring to bear your medical knowledge to service your customers. And so what they expect is very important in terms of whether they come away satisfied.
Again you might not like that medicine is a customer driven, service industry, but this ship has sailed long ago. This is precisely what medicine is. It's a career about people, not products. Your bedside manner, your thoroughness, your patience, and yes, your empathy all will make a huge difference in your career progression in most specialties. And so the NBME considers this fair game for testing.
At any rate I think we've exhausted this debate. I agree that the test is hard because it requires you to pretend too much -- on this we don't disagree. But I don't think empathy is a skillset a doctor ought to have, and I think if you don't have it, you have to be able to still find a way to give the customer the kind of service they expect, even if it means you have to go through the motions. It's true in every people field -- you have to come off as genuinely interested in people and concerned about their problems. If that's not natural to you, you have to find a way to do it un-naturally. So I don't think it's the flaw with CS to expect this.
I do think that CS ought to actually test that people can do a good physical exam as well as these niceties which I don't think it really does. But that's a very different issue than you raised.