Eliminate the utterly unconstitutional residency system, go to a free market for graduate medical training, and the problem will be solved. Of course, socialized medicine can’t function without the abusive overworking of young doctors staffing hospitals. I’m not holding my breath for this to change, since the existing population of MDs are overwhelmingly either pro-socialized medicine in one form or another, or pro-hazing in that they stubbornly insist that requiring insane work hours of residents is “good for their training” despite reams of medical and other research literature showing otherwise. It’s getting really scary to be a patient in need of hospital care.
Don’t go to a tertiary care center. Instead, support your local practitioners by going to a good, large local hospital where you won’t see a resident but you will see an experienced private physician. Skip the Mayo Clinic, stay home!
What in blazes are you talking about? I don’t recall any section of the constitution that deals with the graduate education system. Could you please quote that section for me. I know the match program has been in place for decades and has survived numerous court challenges, so you are full of bull-cookies on it’s constitutionality.
Secondly, the work week for residents is now limited by law to no more than 80 hours. Wow, what a hard life. Try not leaving the hospital for a month at a time like we did and then maybe I will feel a bit sorry for the poor overworked souls in residency today.
You are also full of crap about the “reams” of research showing that long hours do not lead to good training. I would very much like you to quote Medline references to substantiate your hypothesis. Lack of sleep will lead to poor judgment, but long days with few rest periods is what todays doctors are all in for. If you can’t hack in residency, you probably need to be a Dermatologist.
It has to do with realizing that medicine is your life and that you have to be mentored in a craft. There is a way to determine who is willing to answer a call after 18-24 hours on call. That is called commitment.
You have to learn structure, function, malfunction, repair of the human machine....plus the compassion for patients and the ability to detach in order to observe and attempt to heal. You do that by living, breathing, eating and sleeping medicine. Total commitment.
I want a doctor that has been trained in the hardest, most rigorous program. I want the neurosurgeon that did his 5 years of general surgery, 2-3 years of neurosurgical training plus a fellowship in order to take my kid into surgery and muck about in their brain removing tumors and not something else.
The reams of "research" about time and mistakes was recently debunked. The socialist in medicine are the ones trying to make medicine a 9-5 job. If the training methods in the US are so "inferior" why do all the world's best physicians usually train or were trained in the U.S.
If our medical "industry" is so "bad", why do the richest people in the world insist on being treated in the United States. It's cause our system is a competitive system and it rewards brutal hard work and dedication while letting all the rest of the world shaking their heads and wondering why doctors in this country work so hard.
That's the way they're trained.
Which doctor would you want to see you in the ER...the one that starts his/her evaluation, looks at the clock and says..."tsk, tsk..I've put in my 8-10 hours time to give the old cerebral cortex a little R&R." or the doctor that will stick it out for the several hours of tests, exams and radiologic studies that will be necessary in order to determine a serious or not serious condition?
The some new doctors are already looking at the clock, limiting their work loads and trying to cherry pick some patients.... some doctors are , well, "doctors" and are dedicated professionals. I'm choosing the doc that will bust his balls to help me.