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Comment by gamerDude | Hacker News Reader

My ex girlfriend is a pediatric cardiologist who recently passed her boards. When I talked to her about it, she was very much on the side that she wished she didn't have to study for it because it didn't have much to do with her job at all. She just wished she could spend her time getting better at the skills she actually used rather than a wide range of academic material that didn't matter to her day to day.

Her friends from residency thought similarly. That's just a few data points and maybe some doctors are helped, but it definitely isn't every doctor.

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My third daughter was delivered by the anesthesiologist, because the ObGyn was stuck in traffic and the anesthesiologist was the only doctor on the floor. Doctors don't need that stuff outside their specialty... until the day they do.

If you pulled someone off the street, odds are that that person would also be able to successfully deliver your daughter.

How much did the anesthesiologist help, above that baseline?

He made an incision that was needed for a successful delivery. I don't want a random person off the street doing that, no.

Funny how humans were somehow able to reproduce just fine for millions of years before surgical deliveries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YruT2ROEUc

Many women died giving birth.

Oddly enough, the US has the same pregnancy mortality rate as places like Latvia, Moldova, Romania, and the Ukraine. Tied for 56th out of 186 (there are lots of ties)

Similarly, I spoke to a pharmacist recently, and they said the same thing: the board exams expected the person to know information about medication that was no longer even in use.

> When I talked to her about it, she was very much on the side that she wished she didn't have to study for it because it didn't have much to do with her job at all.

I assume you're referring to your ex's exam to become Board Certified in her specialty, which, if you are, makes this statement incredibly hard to believe.

A specialty's Board exam is comprised of simulated cases from that specialty. Your ex wouldn't have to prep for geriatric internal medicine or stroke rehab in pm&r. Basically everything asked in the exam for board certification is related to one's specialty.

It is not a general exam like the STEP exams.

> just wished she could spend her time getting better at the skills she actually used

I can so relate to this when I look back at 4 years I spent studying for a CS degree. The first year had just 3 subjects out of 17 that had something to do with CS. The rest were wildly off the mark. Like engineering drawing, metal workshop, and what not. The second year was slightly better but just. It was crammed with electronics; and only from the 4th semester did things took a definitive turn towards CS topics. I'm sure the curriculum designers had a certain plan in mind but this was devised something like ~60 years ago, when engineering meant mostly civil engineering.

This was all 20 years ago, and I recently checked the syllabus out of curiosity, and no it's not changed one bit. One precious year of learning period down the drain.

Engineering drawing is character building though.

Is it that they need to create some objective barrier to entry?

Yes. It's a way to artificially limit supply, to prop up wages for people on the inside. It's common to most "licensed" professions.

I've wondered about this for forever. Thank you!

> "What the student thought was it temporary concession to the system-"I'll play along just enough so that I can get what I want from the system"-turns out to be the beginning of it forced, permanent adjustment to the system."

This is common to all professional disciplines.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008GRDKPG

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