Jul 17 2009

Doctors

Stop making it so hard for people to become doctors.

I could easily become a doctor.  I would never become a doctor for the
same reason I would never become a teacher: I don’t do worthless
certifications or make-work b.s.  I don’t need to take Calculus 1,453
to know how what symptoms are evidence of swine flu.  Who does?  No
one.

Pre-med is a combination of make-work and do-gooder stuff.  Take a
bunch of classes that have no relevance to the practice of medicine.
(Lawyers who complain about how law school teaches irrelevant classes
obviously don’t know about pre-med.)  Then go around volunteering for
stuff to prove that you’re becoming a doctor because you have a life
dream to help people rather than drive a shiny BMW. In other words,
play pretend.

If regulation were lighter, you could train people to be general-care
doctors in two years.  Most of what doctors do is spot symptoms and
prescribe drugs.  Doctors don’t learn how to think critically.  Just
read, “How Doctors Think.”  Try to actually have a critical discussion
with a doctor about epidemiology or theory of medicine or anything
that requires them to do something other than consult the Physician’s
Desk Reference.  You’ll be disappointed.

Doctors aren’t critical thinkers.  They don’t even remember what they
supposedly learned in all of those pre-med make-work courses, either.

So if we want more doctors, end the mindless regulations.  Provide a
two-year medical school program for general practitioners.  Then make
the tests hard to pass so that morons don’t slip through.

That will NEVER happen.  Why not?  Doctors wouldn’t allow it.  Why
won’t they?

Because being a doctor is prestigious.  If just anyone with a 120+ IQ
could become one without taking irrelevant classes or pretending to
care about people; then doctors couldn’t orgasm in their pants when
saying, “I’m a doctor.”

People will suffer and die because of the need for prestige.  What’s
new about that?