The other thing with a bad job market that many new grads or even a few years out people don't think about is that if the job market sucks, and you're easily replaceable, your department is far less likely to listen to you in terms of needs (ie good staff (better dosimetry, physics, therapists, nurses), more staff, updated technology- and since you are crucially dependent on some or all of these aspects of your job, your job can be quite miserable and the leadership (be it the the hospital or the physician leaders) won't care about your concerns as you are easily replaceable). Remember that not every physician cares about safe practices and these physicians might be your leader, and if your leader thinks you're replaceable, they will say goodbye to you for complaining. If your leader doesn't think you're replaceable then they might work harder to keep you. In a bad market, every physician except the best friend/relative or the person working 90 -100 hrs a week (doing the work of 2 physicians) is replaceable- and even the latter becomes replaceable after a certain turning point. I have seen practices hiring relatives and unmerited friends of the chair or top leadership, keeping those "friends" even when another person of the same capacity would have been relieved of their duties, hiring children of referring physicians or close friends of referring physicians, and if these people were competent it's not the most horrid of things, but if they are incompetent, it is both unsafe and infuriating because the unrelated people will be doing their job while they get the same or better pay, and well, woe be the patients being managed by them [likely they aren't the ones managing, likely the father/mother/best friend is doing the actually managing while patting said person on the back...I heard of a practice where the offspring would not approve of a head and neck plan without having their dad review it first- I don't know this first hand though, I know it second hand]. Can you imagine being the unrelated person in this practice? People also hire friends as staff (nurses, managers) with not the best results. One can also argue well it's not hiring my best friend, it's "networking."
This effectively places doctors in an unsafe work environment which is neither good for the doctor nor all those patients under treatment and again, that means the law should start getting involved- ultimately patient safety is affected on so many levels. And it's not patient safety that JCO can catch. It's also "murky" patient safety- one can debate the competency of staff or son/daughter of the chiar person- it's not clear cut patient safety like expired medication.
This effectively places doctors in an unsafe work environment which is neither good for the doctor nor all those patients under treatment and again, that means the law should start getting involved- ultimately patient safety is affected on so many levels. And it's not patient safety that JCO can catch. It's also "murky" patient safety- one can debate the competency of staff or son/daughter of the chiar person- it's not clear cut patient safety like expired medication.
