Posts by Mark Long2

I was watching some old clips of preseason matchups the other day, and it got me thinking about how much of a letdown these games can be for fans. On paper, the scoreboards always look lopsided, and sure, the "big name" team usually walks away with the win. But if you actually watch the footage, it’s often just a mess of unrefined plays and frustration.

It feels like a weird middle ground where nobody is fully committed, but everyone is still being held to these incredibly high standards. I've seen coaches absolutely lose their cool on the sidelines during these matchups because the rhythm just isn't there yet. It’s hard to get invested in the result when you can tell the players are just trying to shake off the cobwebs and the coaching staff is already breathing down their necks about mistakes.

Is it even worth tuning in for these types of matchups, or should we just wait until the real season starts to actually care about the outcome?

Betty Brown said:I try not to dictate my kids' career paths, but I’ll certainly do my best to make sure they don't get stuck in medicine—unless they eventually land in dentistry. That's largely based on my own family experience.
I really wouldn't want my children to go through all that nonsense.
First off, during those six years of med school, you don't have much of a life if you actually commit to the studies (which is a given)
Then there’s the massive disappointment of watching people who barely showed up to class—and somehow managed to scrape by through sheer luck—suddenly snag the best residencies.
Even if they do land a residency, what follows is literal indentured servitude for several years until they finish, including exhausting on-call shifts that leave you completely drained. So, once again, you get nothing out of life; your family ends up being an afterthought, which is especially true for women.
Once the residency is over, the exploitation just continues, often seasoned by those same colleagues who—heaven forbid—always find some way to get themselves onto every single conference, or get listed as co-authors on papers they haven't even looked at, and somehow end up involved in various side projects that bring in extra cash.
It isn't until about ten years into a specialty that things might finally stabilize enough for a person to start working normally. But by then, it's usually too late because you've witnessed far too much garbage—even if you weren't personally involved in any of it, though the probability is high. For instance: after spending an entire day on a ward, you move straight to an outpatient clinic for on-call duties where patients keep coming in all night. Then, at 4:00 AM, a child comes in with a fever, and you think it doesn't look serious, so you send them home. The child dies in the morning!!! It isn't just about having to explain something to a parent; it's the fact that you'll carry the weight of "If I had just admitted them, that child would be alive today" for the rest of your life. You can Google it all you want, but the consequences stay with you. And it's not just from your own mistakes, but from those aforementioned colleagues, because you're on the same ward and you see everything they do—or rather, everything they fail to do.
And I won't even mention what happens to one's family life during all those years.

That kind of psychological pressure and physical toll simply isn't worth it, no matter how much more money they might be making now. I also finished a relatively difficult degree and I work quite hard, but people's lives don't depend on my job, and I earn more than they do.
Which is why I'm not surprised that doctors, once the Hippocratic Oath loses its luster and they take a good look around, start feeling cheated compared to others and begin looking for "alternative ways."

It seems to me that medicine should only be pursued by monks without families—people who have renounced worldly material comforts, possess a spiritual drive for it, and can actually handle the lifestyle.

I agree with you on certain points, but it has to be said that a career in medicine depends HEAVILY on which specialty one chooses.

Dermatology, ophthalmology, psychiatry, nuclear medicine, occupational medicine, or family practice are examples of specialties where practitioners enjoy a fairly normal life, not just after their training, but during it as well. Of course, there are still sacrifices, hierarchies, and on-call shifts, but you can't compare that to the grind and Spartan regime found on an internal medicine or surgical ward...🙄

In our hospitals, there is a terrible imbalance between departments... on some wards, people are falling over from exhaustion and have enough work for 20 hours a day, while on others, at 1:00 PM, it's empty; the doctors head home, leaving only the nurses and the on-call staff, and people literally have nothing left to do.

I am genuinely stunned by the sheer amount of nepotism required just to land a desired residency.

Look, if there is no money -----> there are no residencies, no specialists, no clinics, no advanced equipment, no surgeries being performed monthly, no technicians, wait times skyrocket, and getting quality healthcare becomes an uphill battle.

Meanwhile, we just pour everything into the military and throw ourselves at the feet of NATO.

lonefox7 said:It is unacceptable for a doctor to be unable to perform something like an injection—it speaks volumes about the quality of education in our country. This isn't just limited to medicine, either; most of our universities focus heavily on theoretical knowledge, which turns out to be insufficient once you actually need to apply it in a practical setting.

Administering injections or similar minor procedures is actually the least of our concerns—any doctor can pick that up in fifteen minutes, provided they do it a few times themselves.

The far more pressing issue in America is the structure of our educational system and how we teach and test proficiency. Specifically, during medical school, students are fed massive amounts of theory and raw data, yet they are taught very few clinical algorithms. Algorithms are precisely what you rely on once you enter practice—they are the tools that streamline diagnosis. Unfortunately, here, those logical frameworks are only learned through trial and error later on in one's career. In my view, that is the fundamental flaw in American medicine, at least regarding the direct physician-patient relationship. Because doctors lack these ingrained diagnostic algorithms—despite having undeniable knowledge—general practitioners often end up ordering unnecessary tests, referring patients to specialists prematurely, or prescribing broad-spectrum medications instead of performing a deep, investigative dive into the patient's actual needs. Of course, much of this is driven by a desire to protect both the doctor and the patient from liability. The byproduct, however, is astronomical costs within local clinics and hospitals, which ultimately burdens the entire healthcare system. Generally speaking, in Western nations—particularly the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom—general practitioners are among the most respected specialists. They handle a much higher volume of diagnostics than our doctors do; while they certainly benefit from better working conditions and perhaps a stronger foundational curriculum, they still serve as the primary point of contact globally. It falls on them to identify everything from psychosomatic issues and hypochondria to emergency interventions and brain tumors.