The reasons that most folks go to medical school may be unrelated to what it is like to actually treat patients. There is a lot of mucus. There is a lot of actual pain.

And you are more than ever a small fish in a big pond.

Many medical professionals are truly messed-up people who end up hating their patients' guts. They have higher expectations for their patients than they have for themselves.

Go read nurses' and doctors' blogs. They are bitter, angry, dissillusioned people up to their eyeballs in debt. They are people complaining bitterly about the self-absorption of their patients, while posting photgraphs of their scars, surgeries, children, "art", weight loss goals, etc. They claim knowledge in areas in which they are ignorant. Just because they are doctors, they feel they are experts in law, politics, etc.

Amazing to suddenly be brought up short, to discover they are fallible, and that taking care of people requires compassion, and you sometimes lose, and gosh, you are just as human and ordinary and fallible as anyone, and even though you are the pinnacle of human life, you still take off your pants to poop.

You'd better hope your doctor is not as ordinary and fallible as your hairdresser. Hair grows back and you get the chance to do it again. If your doctor screws up removing your AVM or your cataract filled lens, you will be forever changed and neither of you will be happy. Of course doctors are frustrated by patients who lie by omission or comission and then are angry about not having their problems resolved. But doctors are very angry and frustrated by the expectation of patients that no matter how badly they treat their own bodies by riding ATVs over cliffs, crashing motorcycles, drinking, using recreational drugs, having plastic surgery like getting a facial, and on and on, the patient expects to leave the doctor made whole just like when they were at 18 years old. We expect to live forever in perfect health until we pass painlessly into whatever we believe is the next life - and the doctor damn well better make it happen because he's being paid to do it! Not by us mind - let the insurance company pay, or the government. It is our right to have perfect health and 24/7 access to our doctor so we won't be inconvenienced by having to miss work or the ball game or whatever we want to do just to get the kid a preschool physicial. Why can't they make things easier? After all, everything else in this country is designed to be convenient so why should getting your colon cancer removed disrupt your life? Things designed and made by man including cars, computers and the legal system break down and cannot be fixed but we're just supposed to accept this and get another or pay a settlement to remedy the problem. God made man and the expectation that man can cure all the defects a body can have is absurd - but Americans do expect it. And if they don't get it, they sue the doctor. Money makes things better - that's why we pay the CEO of every company now going broke on Wall St more than the operating budget of many medical schools. We know what we hold dear in this country and we reward it. The smart kids these days are in business or are pop stars because that's where the money is. I could rant on but I'm getting depressed and remembering why I left patient care in the first place.

accio,

What did you go into?

My family is in medicine (doctors and nurses) and I've worked in a hospital too. The only other place where I've seen people treated worse was retail. I've seen patients and their families treat their doctors and nurses like absolute crap.

They think just because they read something on the internet they know more than someone who went through medical school, residency, internship, and setting up a practice and keeping it. Because of the nursing shortage nurses are expected to take on more patients and do more paperwork. A nurse can be so busy that she's lucky to get a 15 minute break (and then still get called because a patient is calling, or a doctor she was waiting for finally came).

When you have a 12 hour shift, it's not 12 hours it's usually more 13-14 hours depending on how much paperwork you have to finish after your shift. Also there's no concept of holidays. I've worked every holiday except Christmas day. How many professions are there if you make a mistake you can kill someone? Also the money that doctor's and nurses make? Believe me the majority of the ones I know earned their paycheck.

Some people can be seen as bitter, angry, or messed up because you deal with life and death as a job. You are dealing with people who do not want to be there. Patients and families are not always at their best in the hospital. Can you imagine being so emotionally invested in every patient you work with? You can not survive medicine if you work that way.