Hacker News Reader

Comment by vkk8 | Hacker News Reader

Possible explanation: People who become physicians do so for wrong reasons. Medicine is highly paid, high status field and thus attracts people who are reasonably smart and just want to have a good life, but are, in the end, not very internally motivated to keep studying their field. Better system would select for people who are more geeky and like to read the new antibiotic studies for fun, much like many developers do stuff like write their own compilers and file systems for fun.

View on HN

Have you ever talked to real physicians? Except for a few small specialties the pay isn't that great once you factor in educational expenses, unpaid overtime, and liability insurance. Very few are really in it primarily for the money.

We already have a shortage of primary care physicians. Imposing additional selection criteria based on some arbitrary, subjective measure of geekiness would be completely stupid and counterproductive.

But they don't know this before starting, which makes things worse. People are even less motivated after they discover this, especially if they started this career for the money.

Expected lifetime earnings for a typical doctor are ~$7M compared to ~$1.4M for the median person. The pay might not be "that great" by your standards but it's still 4x more than the typical person earns, even taking into account ~$500k of education costs. A typical lawyer makes only ~$5M and has similarly expensive education and a demanding work schedule.

Software engineers only started earning that kind of money in the last decade or so. When today's new doctors were starting off on their education path ten years ago, doctors probably still earned twice as much as even top software engineers.

Medicine is also prestigious in a way that few other careers are. People take notice when you say you're a doctor, and a lot of people enjoy that feeling. A huge number of parents pressure their kids into pursuing medicine, having your kid become a doctor is a surefire way to win the status game among your friends.

I personally know quite a few doctors. I'd say for most of them that desire to help people and desire for personal status were both motivating factors in their career choice.

I know people who got into the medical field because the like "Grey's Anatomy". Incompetence and lack of internal motivation is everywhere. I think most people are just not good at their job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com