Category: System

Everyone knows what it feels like to be a doctor. No, everyone hasn’t drilled holes into peoples heads or drained pus from buttocks. But every single person has experienced why doctors feel stressed.

Doctors spend their lives trying to offer less to people who want more. It’s like talking with someone who does not want to hang up the phone. All. Day. Long.

To be clear, it is not because doctors want to hang up. No, most doctors would love to talk forever, if we could afford it.

We like people.

Patient stories fascinate us.

But the clock ticks. Each minute means more overhead, with less to pay for it. Moments mean money that patients experience for ‘free’ and doctors experience as smaller payments to pay bigger bills.

Five dollars a minute. Patients get it for nothing. After the first 6-10 minutes for regular visits, doctors pay for the extra time.

Lopsided Relationship

This artificial everything-for-free arrangement sets up medicine as an unbalanced caller scenario. One person wants to stay on the call forever. The other person feels pressure to get off as soon as possible. Only politeness keeps us on the phone.

Doctors want to talk. And they do not want to go broke talking. Why can’t we find a way to let people talk as long as they want and pay for the experience, if they want it?

I know some patients would love it. And many doctors would love it too. A match made in heaven: Talkative patient meets sympathetic doctor. Talk away. Solve the world’s problems. Continue reading “Why Do Doctors Feel Stressed?”

‘Existential’ is the word of the year for 2019. Popular use of existential peaked when hippies and psychedelics were cool. But it is in style again.

Dictionaries tell us that existential refers to existence (which doesn’t help much). An existential crisis occurs when we realize our existence is something other than what we believed.

As Ted explained, in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “All we are is dust in the wind, dude.”

Existential Crisis

Doctoring has changed and become something that doctors were never trained to deliver.

Sensitive, hard-working students turn into weary doctors, who walk through clinics by willing each leg to move. One more patient. One less name on the day-sheet. One leg forward. Then the other leg. I can do this.

Medical students learn one thing, but we expect them to practice something else after graduation.

Medical training creates a secular, pseudo-religiosity unique to clinical care. Huddled around naked parts, noses pressed low to the point of interest, learners mumble medicalese, sotto voce.

At the professor’s lead, they straighten up in unison. The professor blesses his patient with soft generalizations. The Padawans nod and smile behind him.

Having mumbled and blessed, the gnostics form a confessional line. They shuffle off, white robes swishing, to huddle over the next patient. Continue reading “Doctors’ Existential Crisis”