Disgruntled Doctors

[mike1618]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

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[lsumedgirl]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

That was harsh. I've had a couple of docs say similar things. I've made it my point to ignore them. I know plenty of other docs who are very happy with what they do. Some people are just going to be miserable no matter what their situation is.

Good luck to you.

 

[mike1618]

thanks....I just wonder what makes one doc so happy and the other hate it so much?

 

[ryandote]

thanks....I just wonder what makes one doc so happy and the other hate it so much?

Maybe how intense of an experience it can be...that intensity would amplify your good or bad feelings about it.

I've never heard a doctor say "Oh, it's okay, I guess." - Love or hate, it always seems.

 

[Tired Pigeon]

Wow, sorry to hear you had that experience. I think that medicine is like any other field -- it's a great fit for some, not so great for others. The big difference is that with most other jobs, if you get in and decide you don't like it, you can usually go do something else without too much difficulty. If you've got a quarter million in educational loans and you're not really trained to do anything else (really, what else are you going to do with surgical skills -- work at the meat counter at the supermarket?!), you're kind of stuck. So that could breed some bad feelings, for sure.

However, it sounds like you've just run into some bad luck with your shadowing attempts. I promise you there are plenty of docs out there who enjoy having students shadow them & who are excited and positive about their profession. So try somewhere else.... and good luck to you!

 

[Droopy Snoopy]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

I agree with lsumedgirl to a point, but you shouldn't just ignore them. For all you know that doc was a starry-eyed gungho premed and didn't consider alternatives to medicine. He found out it wasn't really like ER or Grey's, only then he was in residency making $8/hr with $200K in student loan debt hanging over his head. He finished and started his own practice, only his nurse didn't code something correctly and Jon Edwards sued him for millions of dollars. So he had to sell both his kidneys on the black market and do gay porn for awhile to climb out of the hole.

All of this is just another way of saying consider the fact that medicine is not all fairies and puppydog tails for everyone, maybe even you one day. In the real world **** happens and nothing is ever all it's cracked up to be. You should thank the man for his time and check out nurse anesthesiology. If you don't think it's for you fine, at least you've made an educated and conscious decision. But don't dismiss an experienced and board-certified surgeon's informed opinion because it disagrees with your uninformed one, or belittle it by thinking it's because he's a spoiled rich doctor's son who never worked an honest day's work. Luck with the shadowing hunt!

 

[mike1618]

By no means did I mean to belittle his opinion. As a matter of fact, I took it to heart. I happen to agree with what ryandote had to say. I think that the experience is very intense and caters to intense reactions. Thanks for your input.

 

[kdburton]

Anyone who says that you should check out nurse anesthesiology is probably in it only for the money... Sure they have to get a masters (I think) and then make decent buck, ~$100k. Other than motivation for money, what other reason would someone tell you to check out that field if you're currently gunning for medicine? I know plenty of docs that work tons of hours and love their job - and make much more than $100k to boot. If you really wanna stand at the head of the operating table monitoring the patient and administering anesthetics for much less money than an anesthesiologist then you should become a nurse anesthetist. The reason why you hear these sob stores all the time is the same reason why you only hear bad stuff on the news... because who really wants to run/watch a segment on someone who is really happy? Not the American public

 

[punkindrublic]

Something else to keep in mind about a lot of doctors is that they got into the business before the advent of managed care. Over the last 10 or 20 years, the business of medicine has been turned on it's head to the point that doctors and patients have to be very aware of insurance policies and what, and for how much, they will be reimbursed, which is difficult to accept when you're in a field to help people and the tools to do so are there, but out of reach because of an insurance policy (or lack thereof).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of doctors started practicing when the business was run by MDs, not MBAs, and it's a hard shift to accept, and causes a LOT of bitterness.

 

[gary5]

Ya, insurance companies are ruining the profession. I still consider this occupation worth doing but I also think that this is the last generation before it falls apart.

 

[DocH0lliday]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

On a good day, I'd tell anyone who asked how much I love being a dentist. On a bad day, I can't stop complaining about the negatives of dentistry.

What does a 22 year-old college student know about medicine (or dentistry)? "Shadowing", "observing", or working in the front desk of a medical office doesn't offer anything but a very superficial view of the profession itself. There's more to practicing any profession than that which is observed by the lay person. As a dentist, I have a number of friends who are physicians in a variety of specialties. Every one of them has had a very unenthusiastic answer to the question of "how do you like being a physician." Many of my colleagues in dentistry respond the same way. Yet, health professions (e.g. medicine and dentistry) seems to be far-and-away the most commonly aspired-to profession by college-age students. Why? Because they don't know anything about it.

I think that when people start their residencies or pivate practice, they begin to find that the ideals they teach you in school get thrown out the window, and that practicing medicine or dentistry is very different than what they expected. In reality, patients can be very difficult people--both from a health standpoint and personally. They can be fussy, demanding, know-it-alls who treat you disrespectfully while expecting you to do everything for them and without assuming any responsibility for themselves. (And behind your back, you know that many of them speak negatively about their trip to to the doctor, if they are not complaining about you specifically.) In health care, much more so than any other industry, you are responsible for treating everyone with the same level of respect and meticulousness no matter how unpleasant they are. And your reward for this? Fear of getting sued, or worse, losing your license for making a mistake. All of this takes its toll on people, and health care starts to reveal itself as a fairly mediocre choice of professions...for many. Fortunately, I'm not one of them. I love my profession. But I can certainly see how many doctors don't.

 

[GreenShirt]

I worked in an ER for a while, and I remember one night when a General Surgeon stormed into the ER trying to find the Medical Director of the hospital. He vowed if the MD didn't transfer him to Radiology, he was going to quit practicing medicine and go to law school. I asked him what was so bad about being a general surgeon and he responded along the lines that they have to work crazy hours, spend a lot of time before and after with the patient, and the additional reimbursement he got for it (on top of salary) was not enough to pay his monthly car insurance.

So I think there a lot of insurance/bureaucratic things your Dr. was upset about, but it might have had to do w/ his specialty as well.

 

[riceman04]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

hahahahaha...my father and my sister say that to me all the time. My dad started practicing during the era when docs were still getting reimbursed for much of what they billed and were able to maintain some sort of autonomy.
My sister decided to go for what she thought was the easy route, which was to just work for an HMO...hahahaha...once she reached a specific payscale, the HMO's (yeah...she tried it 2x) they let her go.

 

[gary5]

On a good day, I'd tell anyone who asked how much I love being a dentist. On a bad day, I can't stop complaining about the negatives of dentistry.

What's wrong with dentistry (besides drilling teeth and the look of terror from patients)? Dentists seem to be making way more money than they can spend.

 

[dutchman]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

No job is as harsh as medicine.

 

[Hoo\/er]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

Coming from someone who's had other jobs, medical training is nothing like you'll ever experience. I know exactly where these guys are coming from, and their advice is as solid as a rock.

All you premeds may think it's not about the money now, but wait until you have a couple hundred grand in debt and a family to support. You'll then realize that the money is what makes this business go 'round.

If you want a real shadowing experience, go to the nearest training program in your area and shadow a PGY-1 OB/GYN resident for a month. Every minute that he's there, you're there too - including call. That will give you a better perspective on what medical training is like.

 

[OncoCaP]

If work was mostly fun, your boss would charge admission, maybe $60/day and summer season passes for $800. Find a career you love, and you are cheating the system.

 

[soeagerun2or]

Medicine is not a cake-walk. Even if you get in to the specialty you're interested in, at the place you're interested, and practice where you want when you're done it can still suck. You work long and hard to establish yourself and feel accomplished but realize your efforts are futile when some asswipe lawyer wipes it out with a questionably based malpractice suit (see John Edwards) and gets your license put on probation. Or you see your neighbor, an account executive at a marketing firm, investment banker, or hell even the NA and see how little they had to work (in years of schooling, intelligence to make it, as well as hours on the job) for similar or better payoff and see life is unfair. Add that to a low intellectual satisfaction because you have to do trivial procedures to get paid and the diminishing trust the general public places in medicine because of malpractice, "big medicine" HMOs, and a few bad apples you have a very unhappy lot in life.

I'm not saying medicine is something people shouldn't do but they should give up any naive notion of "helping people" and see it for what it is. A life-long, extremely difficult and unfulfilling (by traditional standards) career choice. So if it's not a calling you feel and want it for the esteem, money, or "I like science and applying what I know [blah blah blah]" please pick something else. You'll thank yourself for it and so will everyone else.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Add that to a low intellectual satisfaction because you have to do trivial procedures to get paid and the diminishing trust the general public places in medicine because of malpractice, "big medicine" HMOs, and a few bad apples you have a very unhappy lot in life.

I'm not saying medicine is something people shouldn't do but they should give up any naive notion of "helping people" and see it for what it is. A life-long, extremely difficult and unfulfilling (by traditional standards) career choice.

I have considerable trepidation about entering this debate which is carried out on SDN continuously on almost every forum, most notably in the General Residency one where it has been part of an ongoing and highly enlightening thread for several years.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and the expression of these on SDN is intrinsically valuable for premeds. Nonetheless, the ferocity of anti-medicine opinions, such as these, may lead one to believe that only a tiny starry-eyed group of attendings, or perhaps a group of insane/incompetent/profoundly rich ones, like anything about their careers.

Therefore, for the record, I am an academic physician who gets paid as such. I do science as well as practicing medicine and have done so for several decades. I was an engineering student in college and continue to use my engineering training every day in a laboratory setting.

I changed from engineering to medicine, not because I thought it was a calling, but because I thought I would enjoy it more than engineering. I considered doing a PhD in biology but was talked out if it by the head of biology at my university who encouraged me to go to medical school.

Now, 25 yrs after getting my medical degree, I find it tremendously intellectually stimulating, I do not think what I do is trivial and the majority of the families for whom I care are very grateful. Malpractice concerns are a very, very small part of my existence and I find much more stress and challenge among the non-physician scientists with whom I work than the physicians. Getting an NIH grant renewed is very stressful, more so in my opinion than caring for patients in an intensive care setting. If things go badly, I still have a job. If a scientist loses his funding, he may lose a lot of salary and his position.

I am grateful to those who helped convince me to go into medicine, am grateful for the opportunities I've had and especially grateful for the career I have. I may or may not "help people." Some think I don't, others do. So be it, that is true of every job. Medicine has vastly exceeded my expectations in every way and I personally enjoy going to work, whether in the hospital or the lab, every day. And for the record, every month I work multiple shifts of 30+ hours and am awake working in the hospital virtually the entire time in those shifts. I believe many of my colleagues in my specialty share that view but am fairly certain that, at this time, very few of them understand SDN well enough to find it and post this here.

Regards

OBP

 

[obgyny]

I stopped by a local doctors office today to inquiry about shadowing. They were about to close but the doctor came out to talk to me anyways. He told me that they don't do any shadowing, but he asked if I wanted advice. Of course I said yes, so his exact reply was "Run the other way". He proceeded to try and persuade me for 35 minutes on why I shouldn't go into medicine. He told me to look into nurse anesthesiology. The most harsh thing he said was that when he and the other surgeons are on break, they strategize about how to get out of medicine. This was coming from a general surgeon. I had the same response from a family practicioner a few months back.

Do you think that this comes from docs who have never actually worked outside of medicine and don't realize that other jobs are harsh as well?

i used to volunteer at a hospital and got to spend one day in the CT scan room. they didn't have much for me to do, so i sat in the back and watched the scans. i was blown away and thought it was the coolest thing to watch the inside of a person's body on a computer screen. a doctor (radiologist, i assume) noticed i wasn't saying much and asked me if i was bored. i replied something along the lines of "are u kidding me? this is awesome!" he asked me what career i wanted to go into and i told him i wanted to be a doctor. he kept asking me, "are u sure u don't want to be a lawyer or something else?" i insisted i wanted to be a doctor, but he said, "no, i really think you should become a lawyer."
after this conversation, he kept singing monty python songs and asking me if i've heard of any of them. he was very odd.

anyway, there's going to be disgruntled doctors just like in every other profession. i'm betting that doc was in it for the money and was very disappointed.

my old pediatrician really seemed to dislike children. when he told me that i had asthma when i was 7, he used medical jargon to describe it to me. i was 7 years old!!!! i never understood what asthma was until i read about it myself in jr high. i can't believe my parents took me to him until i was 15!

 

[gujuDoc]

Anyone who says that you should check out nurse anesthesiology is probably in it only for the money... Sure they have to get a masters (I think) and then make decent buck, ~$100k. Other than motivation for money, what other reason would someone tell you to check out that field if you're currently gunning for medicine? I know plenty of docs that work tons of hours and love their job - and make much more than $100k to boot. If you really wanna stand at the head of the operating table monitoring the patient and administering anesthetics for much less money than an anesthesiologist then you should become a nurse anesthetist. The reason why you hear these sob stores all the time is the same reason why you only hear bad stuff on the news... because who really wants to run/watch a segment on someone who is really happy? Not the American public

And you know that this is their reason how?? There's more advantages then a great pay of a CRNA. Well first there is the fact that there are lesser threats of lawsuits against CRNAs when compared to docs because docs take the majority of the falls if something goes wrong.

For 2. there is not as much time invested in education because you don't need to go through 4 years of med school so you'll start earning sooner.

For 3. You don't have to be on call in the way a doctor does and if you do it wouldn't be as much as a doctor would have to be on call if they were in anesthesiology or surgery etc.

For 4. You don't have to work 80 hours for residency with 30 hour shifts and complete lack of sleep for 4+ years post med school.

For 5. Since you don't have to be going through residency training and 4 years of med school you can start a family sooner if you plan on getting married.

There are several reasons why they could have said to go that route but that route would be pointless if that is not your field of interest.

That's the same problem with dentistry. It offers a great lifestyle but if the oral cavity is not your field of interest then it seems like a turn off.

 

[OncoCaP]

I have considerable trepidation about entering this debate ...

...

Now, 25 yrs after getting my medical degree, I find it tremendously intellectually stimulating, I do not think what I do is trivial and the majority of the families for whom I care are very grateful. Malpractice concerns are a very, very small part of my existence and I find much more stress and challenge among the non-physician scientists with whom I work than the physicians. Getting an NIH grant renewed is very stressful, more so in my opinion than caring for patients in an intensive care setting. If things go badly, I still have a job. If a scientist loses his funding, he may lose a lot of salary and his position.

....

Thank you OBP! It's nice to hear from the physicians who are well past their core medical training and who felt the effort was worth it and would do it over again.

 

[schooltill30]

Obviously, this subject will be on most students' mind through the years and years of expensive education, stress, and disappointments. I honestly think that if you want to be happy with your profession, you have to make it that way yourself. You can't expect the world of medicine to satisfy you without putting in th effort yourself. I am just a lowly junior in undergrad, so I really don't know what it's like out there. I also wonder on a daily basis if I'm getting into something I will dread and regret later on in life. This is why I am a business major with an MIS (Management Information Systems) concentration. I enjoy computers, and I know that if medicine fails me, I have plenty of options. I would love to be a Bio major and get all of the upper level courses that make the first years of med school a bit easier, but instead I am making my own insurance policy just in case medicine doesn't work out.

btw, almost every doctor, student, and resident I have spoken to (at least 10 by now, and counting) has been very positive about the profession.