It has to do with realizing that medicine is your life and that you have to be mentored in a craft. There is a way to determine who is willing to answer a call after 18-24 hours on call. That is called commitment.
You have to learn structure, function, malfunction, repair of the human machine....plus the compassion for patients and the ability to detach in order to observe and attempt to heal. You do that by living, breathing, eating and sleeping medicine. Total commitment.
I want a doctor that has been trained in the hardest, most rigorous program. I want the neurosurgeon that did his 5 years of general surgery, 2-3 years of neurosurgical training plus a fellowship in order to take my kid into surgery and muck about in their brain removing tumors and not something else.
The reams of "research" about time and mistakes was recently debunked. The socialist in medicine are the ones trying to make medicine a 9-5 job. If the training methods in the US are so "inferior" why do all the world's best physicians usually train or were trained in the U.S.
If our medical "industry" is so "bad", why do the richest people in the world insist on being treated in the United States. It's cause our system is a competitive system and it rewards brutal hard work and dedication while letting all the rest of the world shaking their heads and wondering why doctors in this country work so hard.
That's the way they're trained.
Which doctor would you want to see you in the ER...the one that starts his/her evaluation, looks at the clock and says..."tsk, tsk..I've put in my 8-10 hours time to give the old cerebral cortex a little R&R." or the doctor that will stick it out for the several hours of tests, exams and radiologic studies that will be necessary in order to determine a serious or not serious condition?
The some new doctors are already looking at the clock, limiting their work loads and trying to cherry pick some patients.... some doctors are , well, "doctors" and are dedicated professionals. I'm choosing the doc that will bust his balls to help me.
YOU many want to be treated exclusively by doctors who have the mentality that “medicine is my life”, and are happy to forego a healthy family life, optimal personal physical and mental health, and other features of a normal life, and are operating in a physiologically impaired state while treating you. But I don’t want to be treated by doctors like that, and the government should not be able to force the entire practice of medicine into one mold.
As for being treated in an emergency room, that’s exactly where I’ve had some really scary experiences with obviously sleep-deprived doctors (before the current work hour limits were put in place, but in a lot of hospitals, there’s been little actual change in response to the official limits). I’d like to be treated in an emergency room which has been staffed with enough doctors that there is no need for any of them to be working shifts that put them beyond their physiological ability to perform at their best. Economically, this would require eliminating federal mandates for treatment of illegal aliens, drug addicts, and others who are non-paying and often suffering from self-inflicted conditions. The free market would take care of the rest. Voluntary charity would treat as many of the illegals and self-inflicteds as qualified medical staff FREELY choose to treat and/or private donors FREELY choose to pay for.
The practice of medicine is not an exception to the bedrock principle that freedom is a good thing.