I worked for two years before embarking on the med school route and I have to say, there's people complaining about their job in other fields too. BS, paperwork, politics etc exists
as a fact of life.
Now, I can imagine a 22 year old who've never been inside of an office who jumps into med school with all this idealism thinking as long as they have a 'passion' for medicine and a 'love' for patients, they will be happy----well, we all know that jobs eventually just become....a job. I went into CS thinking it's all this stuff and it wasn't. It was boring, tedious work and it was lonely. I changed careers, and so does a lot of people.
So I think dissatisfaction from medicine stems from a few things:
1. A disporportionate of doctors never having experienced another job before medicine so there's the assumption only medicine has to deal with BS in their jobs. My parents had never worked in corporate and only saw the good money. Now, after switching from academia, they see the good and bad side to both. Most doctors in the past probably didn't get a chance to experience a career change so don't know what BS other jobs entails.
2. Not being able to change careers like many other people. Most kids nowadays don't stay in a profession they choose at age 22 as doctors do. For the students who decided to make medicine their career, there's relatively little 'turning back' once you hit med school. You end up with lots of debt and alot of tears when you get out of med school and for many, it's hard to turn away from all that to work in another field.
Now imagine if every college grad could not leave the field of their major----wouldn't there be a lot of anguish and hand wringing from many people about how much BS they have to put up with as well?
3. Too many people come in with stereotypical notions of medicine. I know we've all heard of the 'I want to help people' crowd, but I also heard from the 'I want to make lots of money' crowd.
I think both will be in a world of hurt if they maintain this stance coming into medicine. Most jobs require more than a love for the field or a love for the money it provides---especially in a career as time intensive and demanding as medicine. Medicine is a field where people go into with certain high expectations and when the reality doesn't mesh with the fantasy, people complain. For some reason, medicine tends to attract a certain personality as well----so many premeds I know don't calculate
all the factors that goes into deciding on a career, and it hurts them in the long run.
In the end, I think it is a case of the grass is greener. Yes, there is dissatisfaction that is growing, but I think that can be said of work in general. General stress from work has been increasing for years now and medicine is just in for a rough ride.
My parents are in pharm research and I can tell you there's a lot of dissatisfaction with that as the field has gone sour with lawsuits and market saturation .
I was in computers and there's a lot of people unhappy with their career choice---usually because they picked the career based on one thing like money or enjoyment of programming, and then find out they have to deal with group projects, management, politics etc.
Heck, part of the reason I decided to go back to medicine (was premed in college) was the fact that since my old job was going to force me to work long hours (mandatory overtime w/o extra pay, 60+ hrs work week, weekends etc), get BS from higher ups, spend half a day catching up on paperwork, be yelled at and talked negatively behind my back, might as well go into something more economically secure, pays better, in a field where I get to interact with and directly help people, and utilize a a field I enjoy (biology).
I pretty sure I won't end up too bitter at age 40 because whatever BS I will have to put up with at that age, I seen now it's probably the same BS I saw people at my old job putting up with. My advice to all newbies is to assess your reasons for going into medicine and even try to work a year in other things to make sure medicine is a career you like with all the negatives it entails.
Hm...the more you know, the more things stay the same....