Originally posted by uclacrewdude
Is anyone else besides me going into medicine with a secondary motive of collectively changing the way people think of doctors? Does it ever piss you off to hear about doctors who think their **** don't stink? What are you going to do to avoid being seen in this kind of light?
hopefully i'll just be the person that i've dreamt of being... people will think what they will... i think the public holds doctors to higher standards than others, expecting them to be uber-humans... somehow kinder, gentler, more compassionate, more humble (the biggest joke of all!), more diligent, than those in other professions... it's a vicious cycle where doctors use these expectations to build themselves up as demi-gods, conveniently refusing to acknowledge that they are, in reality, very little of what the public wants them to be... and then the public finds they're arrogant... but not surprisingly, doctors, or future doctors, are just as vulnerable to human vices as everyone else... obviously i'm generalizing, but i think the point is still valid...
interestingly, the public does the same thing to our religious leaders, expecting them to be god-sent, and when we find they're not all they claim to be (reference the catholic church scandals), we're appalled...
nonetheless, i like that doctors are held to a high public standard, as they should be, imho... i think the ideals of what a doctor should be are in place because the actualization of the ideals are important to providing professional and personal care... egoists don't make me too angry, lest i think i am completely above them... but i do think it's important we recognize that the profession does explicitly promote humility as one of its high virtues... implicitly, that may be another story...
