[pieceofthepuzzle]

First of all, although I supported reforms in the number of hours worked by residents, and think making students and residents do too much ‘scut’ work is not good for their overall education, the fact is that residency is a lot easier now than it used to be. There are night floats instead of overnight call in many residencies and fellowships, and strict rules about how many consecutive hours that can be worked. When many of us trained, you would work all day, stay up all night, and work all the next day - then rinse lather and repeat every third or fourth day, on average, depending on the program. I'm not trying to say that this is optimal, or that residents should have to work harder. I'm just saying that working hard in residency is certainly not something new, and all of us paid our dues.

That said, if you haven't been out of residency and actually working, you really don't fully understand the negative effect Obamacare has had on patient care, and why it needs to be repealed.

Actually, I personally feel that the changes in medical education, with more emphasis on ‘population-based’ studies and outcomes analysis, and less on hard medical science, has been detrimental in the training of new physicians. I appreciate the importance and contribution of epidemiology, and statistically tracking outcomes, but much of medicine requires thinking on your feet - as patients don't always fit into the neat boxes used to group cohorts in the studies used as the basis for ‘evidence-based medicine’. People are different, and biology varies as a consequence of a lot of factors. IMHO, you need to have a strong understanding of physiology, metabolism, molecular biology, etc. in order to extrapolate in situations where people don't fit into neat little boxes.

[Chickensoup]

Actually, I personally feel that the changes in medical education, with more emphasis on ‘population-based’ studies and outcomes analysis, and less on hard medical science, has been detrimental in the training of new physicians. I appreciate the importance and contribution of epidemiology, and statistically tracking outcomes, but much of medicine requires thinking on your feet - as patients don’t always fit into the neat boxes used to group cohorts in the studies used as the basis for ‘evidence-based medicine’. People are different, and biology varies as a consequence of a lot of factors. IMHO, you need to have a strong understanding of physiology, metabolism, molecular biology, etc. in order to extrapolate in situations where people don’t fit into neat little boxes.

________________

Boy I am seeing that out in the world. People with missed easy diagnoses like gallbladders and appendix, over and over, getting septic because of lack of diagnosis and care.