Re: What if you don't want to treat patients?

"ifignow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> "Mark Atherton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > I think everybody (you, me, the public) will all be happier if you stay
> > away from clinical medicine.
> > :-)
> 
> For now, everyone is indeed better off if people like me don't join the
> medical system.  However, there is an interesting convergence going on at
> various levels --
> 
> - There are still huge numbers of computer-illiterate health professionals,
> and they are an embarassment unto their professions.  Medical/nursing
> schools cannot afford to graduate computer-illiterate students.

you seem like a very intelligent person, but i think you have the
wrong idea about what doctors do.  where do you get this information
about computer literacy? most health professionals i know are
perfectly able to navigate word processors, spreadsheets and their
hospital-specific software.  maybe the older docs have more trouble,
but not the younger people.

> 
> - The progress of medicine/biology increasingly requires an understanding of
> mathematics, computer science, and other "hard" sciences which biology
> majors have traditionally avoided.

independent of people skills, to be a great doctor you need to have an
excellent memory and strong problem solving skills.  the most math you
ever need is to figure out what drug dose to administer, or how to
change the ventilator in an ICU. this is algebra. to do research in
medical fields (which has almost nothing to do with the actual
practice of treating sick people) you may need to know how write
computer code or do informatics. that has almost no bearing on a doc's
ability to remember the signs and symptoms of a thousand+ medical
conditions.

> - There is a finite supply of health professionals, and they do not want to
> lower their salaries.  However, the world's population is getting both
> larger and older.  Economic pressures are increasingly making medical ethics
> an unaffordable luxury.
> 
> - As computers gain importance throughout society, ethics become more
> important.  We're fast approaching a point where computer science
> departments can no longer afford to graduate e.g. immature pranksters who
> enjoy writing computer viruses.
> 
> It may be no surprise if in another few decades, we enter an era when
> computer science departments screen their applicants extensively for their
> ethics, while medical/nursing schools graduate slick MBA types with laptops,
> who view patients in terms of how much money can be made off of them.
> Caring for patients becomes a low-skill job for nanny types, while "real"
> health professionals either care for wealthy patients or work for biotech
> companies that grow millions of mutant organisms for genetics experiments.