Posted on 04/19/2013 9:08:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last weekend, after I gave a speech at a public forum about healthcare, a woman came up to the podium and privately asked me a question. "My daughter was just accepted to medical school. Do you think she should be a doctor?"
This should have been the easiest question ever, but it was the opposite.
I come from a family of physicians going back more than three generations. It is what we did, what we were. At a family gathering several years ago, I counted 14 men or women who were practicing physicians. Three of the fourteen doctors had married medical school classmates, raising the "family" number to seventeen.
Our family believed that the highest calling for a human being was to heal other human beings. So it should have been easy and immediate for me to say to the mother at the podium, "Of course your daughter should be a physician. There is nothing better in the entire world!" It pained me not to say that.
A recent Wall Street Journal article written by another physician -- more precisely, ex-physician Dr. Ed Marsh -- expresses several emotions all too common in the community of health care providers: doctors, nurses, and allied health personnel. We are angry, frustrated, and confused.
Prematurely retired Dr. Marsh summarized: "The glow of the personal relationship one might have with patients [the reason we get up in the middle of the night for you] is being [actively] extinguished." He speaks for virtually all doctors, nurses, and care providers everywhere, not just in the U.S.
Dr. Marsh is anything but an isolated case. I too gave up clinical medicine last October, most reluctantly. I love caring for babies and still miss doing it. Forty to fifty percent of practicing doctors are now thinking about early retirement.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Sure - just not in the United States.
SOME STATISTICS TO CONSIDER:
* From 1995-2008, admission applications to U.S. medical schools fell by almost 20%.
* Last year there were 110 accredited training positions in heart surgery in the U.S. Sixty applied.
* There are roughly one half a million unfilled nursing positions here.
* Compared to other nations, the U.S. ranks #1 in spending on healthcare by a very wide margin.
* In 2010, we spent 17.6% of GDP. Germany, in second position, spent 11.6%.
* The US is #34 in infant mortality, #40 in population longevity, #81 in hospital beds per 1,000 people. The U.S. is #52 in doctors per 1,000 people (2.3), but we maintain our top position in lawyers per 1,000 people (3.7).
My neice is now doing her internship at a hospital in Michigan.
She owes over $150,000 dollars for her college.
Those are some crappy numbers...especially lawyers.
No.
She will waste her 20’s slaving for nothing only to find a load of debt and a middle class salary at the end. She’ll be 30, broke, and with no savings.
She should be a Nurse Practitioner is she is just dying to go into medicine, but I would tell me daughter to study finance, or accounting.
Though I’d be happiest if she skipped college and became an electrician or a helicopter pilot instead. I’d actually pay for that.
My. Daughter is a sophomore in pre med I’m totally trying to talk her out of it
If I was a young, ambitious doctor now, I’d be looking to set up a medical tourism facility outside the US, probably Chile.
What does she want to do?
RE: Daughter is a sophomore in pre med I’m totally trying to talk her out of it
You must know something about the profession that most of us don’t... care to share it with us?
Why do I always check my grammar AFTER I post? My #6 post is kind of messed up.
Yes, if she wants to marry a nurse..tick, tick....//...tick, tick......give it time to digest, you'll get it :-)
I am a nurse anesthetist. No one should be entering the health profession right now. If I could get out, I would.
After the collapse of Western Civilization and the takeover of America by Islam as planned by Obama, she will have a very important skill to barter with.
Does she plan on practicing for real or having kids and then just part time?
Women and minorities are quota based for most medical or grad schools and take set aside slots
Maybe from a man who would have practiced forever to support a family with a stay at home mom as his wife
As a conservative....culturally....I know where I stand on this
It is a major issue today....trained medical professional women who end up working less or none after babies
Women are half of med school now
Obamacare notwithstanding
Several hundred thousand dollars of debt and socialized medicine limiting MDs to school teacher salaries. Happens everywhere government healthcare monopoly is implemented.
“The US is #34 in infant mortality”
I believe that this stat has been refuted.
It is about “how” we declare something a viable human infant. In Germany, I think it’s something like 2-3 days after birth that they call it an infant so if an infant dies within 24 hours it doesn’t count in their infant mortality stat. I think we even count 2nd tri-mester miscarriages.
Comparing nation-to-nation stats isn’t always clear.
If she wants to work for the government, but on her own if sued for malpractice, sure. What’s not to like?
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