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Comment by daniel-cussen | Hacker News Reader

> exhausted all the time, understaffed and overworked

That's precisely what they want, they want to be understaffed and underworked to create the myth of the suffering heroic doctor, so that they can justify all the other privileges they get and the gigantic salaries, bribes from multi-level marketing, and disgusting hedonistic trips to the Caribbean.

There's good doctors too and guess what? They're hated by mainstream doctors. I love those guys, they're so good.

If doctors were actually good the absolute first thing they would instantly do is allow there to be ten times as many doctors, that would make everyone in America much healthier instantly.

These guys are like Google, but a pentillion times more expensive. In fact one time I went in, I started talking to the doctor, he just started googling right in front of me.

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> If doctors were actually good the absolute first thing they would instantly do is allow there to be ten times as many doctors

They also want every doctor to be minimally competent and that goes completely against the goal of having as many doctors as possible, or, better, highlight the fact that this is how many doctors (or healthcare professionals) we can have considering cost of education, both monetary and in time.

If you really want more doctors, you could also pay software engineers and lawyers less. I was married to a doctor and I know how much she studied to be one. It's much easier to become an average software engineer or lawyer than becoming an average doctor. And you wouldn't want to meet an average doctor right after totalling your car with you inside. Changing the financial returns would make the profession more attractive to those who are in the game for money.

If I could make what I make counting squirrels in my backyard, do you think I'd think twice before leaving software engineering? ;-)

What do you mean if doctors were good they would allow ten times as many people to become doctors?

That's not how it works. The process of becoming a doctor is much more formalised than you seem to insinuate and mostly does not depend on a single individual or a group of individuals other than indirectly.

I do agree that some doctors have a Messiah complex and are self-important to the point of absurdity, but they still mostly tend to do a good job.

I would argue that the limiting factor of why there is a general shortage of doctors and nurses is that the job is not the easiest one, physically or mentally, people tend to work long hours and awkward shifts and the education itself is challenging and long.

> tend to work long hours and awkward shifts and the education itself is challenging and long.

Both of those are professional masochism. In particular older doctors make sure would-be doctors and young doctors go through decades of shit in order to keep the old doctor's privileges and salaries incredibly high, without making it obvious it is a completely cornered market. If doctors could, they would close the medical schools. But they know they would get lynched by a mob, for real, really in real life, the laws against it would stop nothing, so they have no choice but to leave medical schools open producing a symbolic number of replacements with an excrutiating amount of hazing and harmful education, which very much makes them worse doctors. And lots and lots of attrition, the old doctors love that, mmm attrition, all the benefits of saying there's slots in medical schools without the actual competition from petulant young doctors.

Not sure at all what you are talking about. This is about a nurse, not a doctor. The difference between the two (especially in pay) is vast, nurse != Doctor Jr.

Nurse practitioner yes, pretty much a doctor. Better actually, means less prestigious, which means better.

Was mostly talking about nurses and other hospital staff, not the doctors. Sorry for being unclear.

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