2.) The federal government controls the number of residency slots each year, through Medicare funding for residency programs. I don't pretend to know the details of how it works, but my impression is that to get more residents per year, you need to convince Congress that it's necessary.
3.) Classic chicken-and-egg problem. Any medical student can go into surgery if they want to, unless their performance up till that point is seriously below par. However, there are many other specialties that offer more attractive lifestyles. So to increase the number of students who choose to do surgery, you'd need to find a way of signaling to students that the life of a surgeon isn't all back-to-back divorces, microwave dinners, and 80-90hr work weeks.
#2 - If Congress were convinced of that, would that help lower medical costs for patients or possibly increase it? That's assuming without some sort of tax increase to pay for it.
#3 - I guess this why I've heard that dermatology is one of the most competitive fields to get into - good hours, not as much stress, and good pay.
I asked and he told me that was a fairly typical surgery day.
However, this is a vestige of the old culture and is slowly but surely being replaced both by new rules and, generally speaking, a better culture.
Sorry, you and your industry should be ashamed of themselves for putting lives at risk. Mistakes from fatigue are a real thing. Maybe you are just cutting off bunions, but there still could be complications.
Why there's this dichotomy when there are clear examples of how to educate medical students 'right', I don't know. Maybe it's better for medical students like me to forget trying to go to class when there's poor quality teaching and try and learn it on my own. Or maybe in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter because the real education comes in residency.
My undergraduate degree was also in CS, did you ever feel like you wasted four years of your undergraduate education just to go into medicine later? I'm trying to position myself in such a way that I still get to use those sorts of skills after medical school, but I forget much of what I thought I knew, and the field changes constantly. L
In software the long hours have specific reasons. For example we can't double throughput by doubling resources, and in startups the money is limited, etc
Yes. Bad management and artificial marketing deadlines. You can't double the throughput in some cases by doubling the resources. (in some you can) But you don't have to work in the kind of environment that expects it. I got pulled into the environment that expected long hours once. Then the manager got replaced - throughput stayed the same, people started leaving on time and were much more happy.
My counterargument is that 'culture' isn't fixed and there's no reason not to strive for better and give people a chance to have lives outside work.
For example if a trusted management quality metric was reading "sucks", it would be easier to leverage change.
The upside is that when I do a great job, it really is rewarding. The downside is telling families and patients I do not have much to offer, and their disease is too far gone. Anyway, don't go into medical school / surgery if you don't want to work hard. No one has a gun to your head. Physicians that pick the right profession for their personality / skill set are very happy.
PS my undergraduate degree was computer science