Normal docs

Every time I go to the #doctor in #Denmark I'm always shocked at the difference between US #healthcare and EU healthcare in how stressed the doctor looks.

The last three times I went to a doctor in Chicago, every general practitioner I interacted with looked worked to death. Bags under their eyes, too busy to make eye contact with me. Just always typing on the computer and then leaving the room. Truly looked like the worst job on the planet.

Denmark I needed a doctors appointment. My primary doctors office is closed for training, so I got routed to another office. Same day appointment, go in and the doctor looks normal. We have 30 minutes, I use 20 of them, he doesn't seem stressed or worried at all.

I pass by a group of doctors joking in a break room with some coffee and cake. It looks like a normal job. A lot is made of how bad the US system is for patients but you don't realize how horrible it is for doctors until you see doctors allowed to be normal people.

https://c.im/@matdevdug/110428770809815791

“a culture of resistance to change”

"…As my residency progressed, my doubts about my chosen profession only mounted. Time and again, my colleagues and I found ourselves coming into conflict with a culture of resistance to change and innovation. There are some good reasons why medicine is conservative in nature, of course. But at times it seemed as if the whole edifice of modern medicine was so firmly rooted in its traditions that it was unable to change even slightly, even in ways that would potentially save the lives of people for whom we were supposed to be caring. 

By my fifth year, tormented by doubts and frustration, I informed my superiors that I would be leaving that June. My colleagues and mentors thought I was insane; almost nobody leaves residency, certainly not at Hopkins with only two years to go. But there was no dissuading me. Throwing nine years of medical training out the window, or so it seemed, I took a job with McKinsey & Company, the well-known management consulting firm. My wife and I moved across the country to the posh playground of Palo Alto and San Francisco, where I had loved living while at Stanford. It was about as far away from medicine (and Baltimore) as it was possible to get, and I was glad. I felt as if I had wasted a decade of my life. But in the end, this seeming detour ended up reshaping the way I look at medicine—and more importantly, each of my patients…"

— Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia MD
https://a.co/0Rr8qnF

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Degraded personhood

"The Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?"

Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto [2010]
https://a.co/6Rs2n1i