I know double posting is frowned upon, but this is a completely different idea than my old post, so I felt it warranted a new one.
I see a lot of posts like this one
I think the lifestyle kids are disgusting. Did you not hear about the long workweeks and the sacrifices in your personal life you'd have to make when you first applied to medical school?
This "different strokes for different folks" garbage needs to die. Your actions and lifestyle do not exist in a vacuum. The medical system puts a lot of resources into training each physician, anticipating that they will be able to care for the population in the future. There are already not enough doctors to see patients, and you think it's totally cool to weigh down the system so you can make easy money and work part-time? What a pathetic self [sic] of self-entitlement.
If you don't have a minimum level of dedication to your patients (and yes, that means more than ****ing 40 hours a week), you shouldn't have applied in the first place.
that bash people for thinking about lifestyles, their spouse, their children, their interests outside medicine, and it really makes me feel sad to see stuff like this. Just because a lot of effort goes into training a physician does not mean that everyone should work 100+ hrs/week. Because face it, the world needs ER Docs. It needs Dermatologists, Psychiatrists, FP Docs, Hospitalists, and all the other guys who don't work the hours of a Surgery Resident.
I also know that a lot of people, even in the medical profession, speak with annoyance at the newer generations of physicians for having the temerity to think about life outside medicine (the horror!). I think these guys are full of crap, and have the introspective skills of a rock.
I mean, let's think about medicine in the past. One thing that people cared about, a lot, was prestige and money. This was why specialties like GenSu, and top IM programs, were so popular: they were the gateway to prestigious fellowships in fields like Vascular Surgery, Surgical Oncology, Gastroenterology, Cardiology, etc. Yes, these fields meant a lot of work. But they also meant a lot of prestige and money, which was what people back then valued. As this passage shows, things are different now.
Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty said:
Medical students, therefore, are turning to specialties that afford better lifestyles and minimal hassles. As medical students reject fields with more grueling lifestyles (like internal medicine and obstetrics-gynecology), one workaholic specialty is particularly suffering: general surgery. In the past, only the most elite students---those within the upper tier of their class—went into surgery. A highly competitive specialty for decades, general surgery is the gateway to high-status careers in vascular, cardiothoracic, oncologic, and plastic surgery, among others. But the current generation of students seems less concerned with prestige. The poor quality of life and years of personal sacrifice are discouraging many top medical students from surgical careers. These shrewd students do their cost-benefit analysis and surgery is the loser.
Things have changed now, and younger future physicians, such as myself
🙂, are thinking more about lifestyle instead of prestige and money. And you know what? That doesn't make me any less of a man for doing so. Deal with it.
