Those of us who are still working envy the physicians who have retired. Our private specialty group that had been in existence over 20 years recently sold out to become hospital employees. We did not like giving up our autonomy but there was no reasonable alternative. Even you might be surprised what it takes to satisfy the ever growing requirement from CMS. Our hospital has a physician and several nurses whose full time job is to assist providers deal with all of the confusing rules and regulation.
Training in geriatrics for most primary care providers is probably inadequate. One of the geriatricians I trained under emphasized minimizing the number of medications prescribed to the elderly. He would usually stop all medications when he admitted somebody unless they were keeping the patient alive and add some of them back gradually if there was a really strong indication. That was almost 20 years ago. Now CMS won't let us keep somebody long enough in the hospital to employ that strategy.
I'm sure that there are crummy physicians but if you really believe the primary purpose of modern medicine is to make a buck at the expense of the patient's health you are terribly misguided.
Who would want to study for years, accumulate huge debt, work long stressful hours just to be micromanaged by a bunch of bureaucrats while the general public believes that you are overpaid?
I'm so sorry.
I had a baby last year, and I cannot think of anything worse than losing my child.
Our highest highs and the lowest lows will always come from our children, and loosing one must be the lowest feeling of all.
We had a family medicine resident at this hospital who had over $500,000 in student debt. Not easy to repay on a $150,000 year salary.
That included undergrad, grad school and a Caribbean medical school. Not typical, more of an extreme example. In Europe you start medical school right out of high school but I get the impression that their HS (gymnasium) is much more rigorous than ours.
