The world needs thinking doctors. There are very few, I think.
Thinking doctors aren't technicians. They try to see the big picture. They know that, as doctors, they are no more qualified to make ethical conclusions than a software programmer or a fine-dining waiter.
Non-thinking doctors think (?) they are experts in almost any area, especially the ethics of their own profession (end-of-life issues, beginning-of-life issues). In one of my classes in first year medical school, the question was put out there, "should doctors be able to make their own ethical codes?"
Obviously government legislative bodies make laws on the basics dos and don'ts. But physicians are left to establish their own "standard of care" that often goes beyond the law. A case in point is protection of conscience laws and the "duty to refer" for abortion that has become the standard of care in many places.
Read any medical association's Code of Ethics and see what you find - should we be letting doctors, as doctors, impose their majority opinions on the members of their professions?
Thursday, February 02, 2006
HIbernation in the North
I have been enjoying a break from medicine, before the final stretch. This spring I'll be called a doctor, employed as an intern in the hospital. I'll rotate through many of the same specialties again, this time with real responsibility for patients' lives.
Many people look at internship as a kind of slavery - long hours, long nights, almost continually paged for little things by patients, nurses, staff doctors - the one who does all the grunt work, all the miles of paperwork (in my hospital we say, "saving lives, one paper at a time.") Like most things in this "career" of medical education, it shouldn't be as bad as they make it out to be.
In fact, medical education must be a cake walk compared to what it used to be. I am eternally grateful to activist feminists who have made medical school and residency a humane occupation. I won't go into details - it would be too embarassing to recount how many hours medical students used to be instructed in anatomy, for instance, and how many hours were spent in the labs, etc. compared to how much is required now... But I certainly have no complaints.
Many people look at internship as a kind of slavery - long hours, long nights, almost continually paged for little things by patients, nurses, staff doctors - the one who does all the grunt work, all the miles of paperwork (in my hospital we say, "saving lives, one paper at a time.") Like most things in this "career" of medical education, it shouldn't be as bad as they make it out to be.
In fact, medical education must be a cake walk compared to what it used to be. I am eternally grateful to activist feminists who have made medical school and residency a humane occupation. I won't go into details - it would be too embarassing to recount how many hours medical students used to be instructed in anatomy, for instance, and how many hours were spent in the labs, etc. compared to how much is required now... But I certainly have no complaints.
