What I wish I knew as a medical student

Dr. Robert G. Gish, medical director, liver transplant program for California Pacific Medical Center and Epocrates subscriber, shares three tips for tomorrow's physicians looking to run a successful medical practice: providing the best in patient care, understanding the business of medicine and obtaining work/life balance.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Epocrates
• Future
• Physicians
• Gish
• med
• students
• patient
• care
• physician
• practice
• medical
• advice

[wtfthatsrandum]

thank god for the nhs - i don't need to consider profit as the ultimate goal of my work

[BandofSorensons]

@Lilquhizway It makes no sense to compare medicine to free market businesses because patients, lacking medical expertise, are not poised to make decisions in keeping w/ free market economics. When someone has a heart attack and needs to go to the hospital, they just go, regardless of the fact that there might be more bang for their buck elsewhere. Medicine isn't amenable to such assumptions and greedy doctors realize this but continue to pretend to be capitalists just as long as they benefit.

[c23am]

How can you trust a single doctor in a profit-based health system.

[BeepimajeepBeep]

@BandofSorensons What happens when the world becomes over populated and no one has food or resources? I don't think people realize that we can't keep overpopulating the earth at an exponential rate.

Population control is a good thing, it's all nature... let nature take its course.

[drtz4890]

@BandofSorensons You nailed it, IMO. Atul Gawande covers this issue in his books "Complications" and "Better"

[Seasass]

I guess I'm not gonna have a good life, then ...

[BandofSorensons]

@Lilquhizway I would also point out that patient outcomes are actually better in countries like the UK, than in the US. We have among the worst infant mortality rates among the wealthiest nation-states in the world and far too many of our citizens are effectively completely cut out of the medical system altogether due to their lack of over priced health insurance. From the point of view of people who are not paid to be doctors in the US, our medical system is a totally broken

[Lilquhizway]

@BandofSorensons. what happens to any social system that gets dominated by the government...it normally doesn't thrive as it should. the healthcare in the use - being competition based (in a sense) is healthier (despite uncontrolled spending and the dismissal of patient/dr relations being primary). Also the pay is not worth it compared for the amount of sacrifice you put into your schooling, same goes for pay of other healthcare staff, in the US you are paid well for your work, in the UK nope

[BandofSorensons]

@Lilquhizway What makes it so horrible?

[wtfthatsrandum]

@clos4672 There's a difference between rewarding hard work and allowing people to suffer simply because they are not as well off. For one thing, hard work and earning a large salary are not always the same thing. For another, in systems with medicine as a business, the hospital generally will take you for everything you have, even when its unnecessary. The way that system works is to let the poor die and to bleed the rich dry - no one wins.

[clos4672]

@wtfthatsrandum

Yeah, what an awful thing to be rewarded for your hard work and contribution to society.