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Rick M's avatar

That can be said for many jobs.

When the water treatment plant I designed is constructed and a town has reliably clean drinking water for the first time, or when a building collapses and dozens of lives are tragically lost and the families are desperate for answers as to how or why this happened and ask me to investigate, or if I make a bad call and the crack in the concrete is worse than I thought and the bridge collapses and crushes 7 people just waiting at the red light in their car - it also feels not 'just a job'.

Maybe you find it insulting for a profession to be called 'a job'. I would think you'd find it more insulting for a corporation to demand better results while at the same time penalizing you for taking the time to deliver better results because that additional time is costing them revenue they could be getting if you had finished sooner and moved onto the next patient/project/job.

I don't know how long you have been retired for, but I recall having a similar discussions with my father before he passed away (he retired around 2003); the job market has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. You are, in general, not rewarded for loyalty or hard work. You're rewarded for providing a particular skill set at a particular time. There is no metric in your performance review for how many babies you consoled, how many left with a smile after speaking or seeing you, how many "fires" you put out while helping other professionals. It all comes down to whether the corporation still feels you bring more value than you cost.

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PharmHand's avatar

Certainly! It might be said that all jobs are more than just a job, and persons - like an airline pilot (or taxi driver) need/must understand that what they do is often more important that they may know. But you seem to want us to believe that putting one’s selfish priorities above a duty to those they serve is to be acceptable and understandable. I see things rather differently.

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Rick M's avatar

How soon before you open a free clinic serving everyone?

This is obviously a rhetorical question, my point being that you already put selfish priorities above your duties to serve when you ask for a salary with benefits.

A common thread I hear among the physicians in these comments is that taking days off results in other physicians needing to pick up the slack. Instead of griping about others not working hard enough, why not increase the supply of doctors and medical professionals by eliminating State licensing requirements?

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Benjamin Lippmann, DO's avatar

Rick, medicine is a job, a profession, and also a cult. We say candlelight vigils to corpses, swear sacred oaths, and engage in ritualistic abuse (sleep deprivation) of our acolytes and apprentices. We kill ourselves, sometimes literally, “for our patients.” And the cult accepts these death sacrifices with murmuring mixed feelings — observe the comments on news articles in regard to residents who die by suicide.

As compassionate as we are for our patients, the training insists that we administer no compassion for our trainees. Instead we demand toughness and resiliency from our cult members. And the cultish way of enforcing resiliency is, apparently, heaps of antipathy and abuse.

P.S. I really appreciate your thoughtful comments, Rick M. Thank you.

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Tetiana's avatar

exactly that. I don't know how it is going in US, I live in western Europe, and I know for a fact that our occupied-bed-count-based model of medicine funding lead us to severe shortage of beds and personnel. The capitalist model doesn't really work for medicine, there needs to be a different approach. And of course doctors are human and need to be able to manage their personal needs while being doctors, nobody is an ironman, they all need sleep and they all need to be able to have a life outside of the hospital and patient care.

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PharmHand's avatar

You are missing the relevant point entirely - practical realities exist for all, put disingenuous claims of illness intended to shirk responsibility - to be justified by ‘its just a job’ is despicable irrespective of the job. This is made even more abhorrent when the services to be rendered are services to persons suffering and in need.

What ever economic methods used to finance the work, mendacious attitudes are despicable.

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Rick M's avatar

Instead of shaming people who take days off by calling in sick, and relegating the work that most people do as "just a job" in a very condescending manner, while they earn on average $60K per year (lower for other demographics) in comparison to the average of $165K per year for doctors (nearly 3 times the average American salary), your argument would work much better as such:

Doctors are extremely well-paid and in a highly regulated environment with many priveleges that are not afforded to most people, they should be planning vacation days in advance rather than calling in sick at the last minute which results in patients having to reschedule their appointments or other doctors needing to cover for them.

So far the majority of comments have been moral grandstanding about never calling in sick and that you should expect to work yourself to the brink of death. No one outside of medicine shares this belief.

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PharmHand's avatar

Best of luck to you and yours when next you aren’t so well served by the ‘it’s just a job’ slacker that shows up late to your bedside after you bleed all over the ED waiting room floor…

From one grandstander to another - Good Day

🤓

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Rick M's avatar

Went from "how dare people call in sick when they're not really sick" to "I hope you bleed to death because of an incompetent doctor" real quick there.

The true face is finally revealed.

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PharmHand's avatar

And I don’t hope you bleed at all - I hope you’re served by healthcare workers who care about your wellbeing more than they care about getting some time off…!

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Rick M's avatar

Have you considered the possibility that healthcare workers will be better able to care for people's wellbeing if they occasionally take an extra sick-day here and there so they can enjoy time with their family/loved ones/personal interests?

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PharmHand's avatar

I never said - and no healthcare worker I have ever known in my nearly 50 years in healthcare work has ever suggested - that a healthcare worker may ‘never call in sick. The truth is the opposite. The point of the article was - falsely claiming to be sick.

I get the impression that you are either blind to the reality of this point or you are too obtuse to notice.

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Rick M's avatar

I guarantee you that there are people you know who called in sick without actually being sick but will never admit it to you. And why would they when they know they'll be morally harangued for taking a day off when they weren't feeling up to it?

Again, corporations don't give you good-boy points because you never took a day off or called in sick. You will be discarded the moment you are no longer of value to them.

Did the hospital/clinic you work for give you extra money towards your 401K because you didn't call in sick?

Again, it's not an excuse to be bad at your job, but you seem to think that taking a day off when you're not really sick is the sign of a bad doctor. Maybe, but that's a bold claim to make without any data.

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Maureen Ryan's avatar

Selfish? I’m not sure we can label peoples concerns that way. It could be that trainees are treated with less respect now than I was.

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