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Comment by mattwrench | Hacker News Reader

This article touches on why it somewhat bothers me to see some of my smartest friends applying to med school right now. I'm sure being a doctor is a rewarding profession and the work they do is so incredibly important to their patients--but it's not particularly unique work. Medicine is the application of the already known. (Most med students are not going to be the next DeBakey.) Rather than contributing original work, most doctors seem to be well-paid (and deservingly so) blue collar workers. If someone turns down a med school acceptance, that school can instantly pull 100 names of their waitlist who will be more-or-less just as qualified.

Sivakumar is right in that there aren't many doctors who can also code. While he may not get to feel the joy of directly improving patients lives, this goal of his seems far more important to the well-being of everyone.

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You can make this argument about most software developers too, while they may create unique applications, they are mainly using the "already known" (existing languages, API's, etc)... You can then go on to apply this argument to nearly any other "white collar" job, accounting is "the application of the already known", etc..

White collar does not mean that you are in a research field and pushing the limits of knowledge, from what I understand it has long had an entirely different meaning. Personally, I feel that white collar / blue collar are very outdated terms. I often feel that a software developer is somewhat of a modern blue collar worker as its a creative trade and very different from a "white collar" job such as a sales or marketing job.

"Blue collar" was a poor voice of words. You're right that the white/blue collar divide is not a creative difference.

But I still feel that software development is a creative field whereas most of medicine is reactive. All fields are based upon past knowledge so the use of APIs seems irrelevant since they are just tools used to create.

The criterion to differentiate between creative and non-creative fields seems to be whether multiple "correct" answers exist. Obviously in programming the solutions to problems vary in terms of algorithms,implementations, etc. On the other hand, medical diagnosis is either correct or incorrect. Even prescribing treatments seems to be more of "do X with A factors, do Y in the presence of B factors" rather than an individualized, creative approach.

There is a certain element of truth to what you are saying. When I was early in my training I was dissappointed in my choice of medicine as a career because I also thought it lacked an outlet for creativity. As a now experienced physician, there are still times when you get to a point in the care of some patients at which the next step is programmatic and rote (if A then B).

However, sometimes--probably most of the time--the patient's presentation is so unclear (e.g. "I just feel weird. . . ."), there are so many variables to juggle in your head at once (twenty different lab values, the way the liver feels, the imaging findings, the color of the patient's sclera, the smell of their breath, their mood) that things become far too complex for any flowchart. These are the times when you need creativity, "book smarts" and perhaps above all, "emotional intelligence" to be a good doctor. There are plenty of doctors lacking one or more of these elements, and they just aren't very good at the job.

That makes a lot of sense. The above criterion I mentioned does seem to fall apart since I do consider problem solving to be inherently creative even though oftentimes there is only one answer.

Good to hear from an actual physician though. Do you think that your initial disappointment is a unique response or do most med students go through it? I ask because everyone I know who is getting accepted to med school has wanted to be a doctor since high school. I assume that makes med students get tunnel-vision when deciding their career choices and have an idealized, incorrect view of the field. (I figure most future doctors just get over this pretty quickly by finding different, but equally important reasons to be in the field.)

I can't speak for everyone else, but for myself, "tunnel vision" explains it pretty well. At some point in high school, I just decided being a doctor was a totally awesome thing to do. I can't remember the real reasons why I chose medicine, but I know it was somewhat vague. I knew doctors were smart and I thought I was pretty smart. I am embarrassed to admit I also may have fantasized about driving a BMW from my big house with a pool straight to the OR, busting in with an "S" on my chest to save somebody's life.

In college, I was drawn to the humanities and to computer science more than to biology, but I stuck with it. I was a willing victim of the rather unhealthy obsession with "getting in" that most pre-meds develop. Medical school, at least at first, was a rude awakening. It was not intellectually challenging (other than by virtue of the sheer volume of material), it was rote, the hours sucked, the and the culture was unpleasant.

It was not until a couple of years into my residency that I started to really appreciate more of the nuances, and to enjoy practicing medicine. As it stands today, I love what I do. I help people in a tangible way, I make a good living, I am respected and valued by my community, and at as I described above, my creative and intellectual muscles get a daily workout. However, I don't do any busting into ORs and, sadly, I don't drive a BMW.

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