Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession?
All too often these days, I find myself
fidgeting by the doorway to my exam room, trying to conclude an office visit
with one of my patients. When I look at my career at midlife, I realize that in
many ways I have become the kind of doctor I never thought I'd be: impatient,
occasionally indifferent, at times dismissive or paternalistic. Many of my
colleagues are similarly struggling with the loss of their professional ideals.
It could be just a midlife crisis, but it
occurs to me that my profession is in a sort of midlife crisis of its own. In
the past four decades, American doctors have lost the status they used to
enjoy. In the mid-20th century, physicians were the pillars of any community.
If you were smart and sincere and ambitious, at the top of your class, there
was nothing nobler or more rewarding that you could aspire to become.
Today medicine is just another profession,
and doctors have become like everybody else: insecure, discontented and anxious
about the future. In surveys, a majority of doctors express diminished
enthusiasm for medicine and say they would discourage a friend or family member
from entering the profession. In a 2008 survey of 12,000 physicians, only 6%
described their morale as positive. Eighty-four percent said that their incomes
were constant or decreasing. Most said they didn't have enough time to spend
with patients because of paperwork, and nearly half said they planned to reduce
the number of patients they would see in the next three years or stop
practicing altogether.
American doctors are suffering from a
collective malaise. We strove, made sacrifices—and for what? For many of us,
the job has become only that—a job.
That attitude isn't just a problem for
doctors. It hurts patients too.
