Ok guys, listen up... I came across an article in the New York Times which was written last January 6, 2008 regarding the falling down of the so-called "elite "professions. Here's what they had to say...
So now who’s going to cheer up the doctors?
As of 2006,
nearly 60 percent of doctors polled by the American College of Physician
Executives said they had considered getting out of medicine because of low
morale, and nearly 70 percent knew someone who already had.
In a typical
complaint, Dr. Yul Ejnes, 47, a general internist in Cranston, R.I., said he was
recently forced by Medicare
to fill out requisition forms for a wheelchair-bound patient who needed to
replace balding tires. “I’m a doctor,” he said, “not Mr. Goodwrench.”
Make
no mistake, law and medicine — the most elite of the traditional professions —
have always been demanding. But they were also unquestionably prestigious. Sure,
bankers made big money and professors held impressive degrees.
But in the
days when a successful career was built on a number of tacitly recognized
pillars — outsize pay, long-term security, impressive schooling and authority
over grave matters — doctors and lawyers were perched atop them all.
Now,
those pillars have started to wobble.
“The older professions are great,
they’re wonderful,” said Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the
Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday
Life” (Basic Books, 2003). “But they’ve lost their allure, their status. And it
isn’t about money.”
OR at least, it is not all about money. The pay is still
good (sometimes very good), and the in-laws aren’t exactly complaining. Still,
something is missing, say many doctors, lawyers and career experts: the old
sense of purpose, of respect, of living at the center of American society and
embodying its definition of “success.”
In a culture that prizes risk and
outsize reward — where professional heroes are college dropouts with
billion-dollar Web sites — some doctors and lawyers feel they have slipped a
notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and
accountants. It’s not just because the professions have changed, but also
because the standards of what makes a prestigious career have changed.
This
decline, Mr. Florida argued, is rooted in a broader shift in definitions of
success, essentially, a realignment of the pillars. Especially among young
people, professional status is now inextricably linked to ideas of flexibility
and creativity, concepts alien to seemingly everyone but art students even a
generation ago.
“There used to be this idea of having a separate work self
and home self,” he said. “Now they just want to be themselves. It’s almost as if
they’re interviewing places to see if they fit them.”
Indeed, applications to
law schools and medical schools have declined from recent highs. Nationally, the
number of law school applicants dropped to 83,500 in 2006 from 98,700 in
2004—representing a 6.7 percent drop between 2006 and 2005, on top of the 5.2
percent slip the previous year, according to the Law School Admission
Council.
(Maybe they’ve been talking to actual lawyers. Forty-four percent of
lawyers recently surveyed by the American
Bar Association said they would not recommend the profession to a young
person.)
The number of applicants to medical school, meanwhile, has dipped to
42,000 from 46,000 in 1997, although it has recovered from a low of 33,000 in
2003.
Students are focusing now on starring in their own creations, their own
start-up businesses, said Trudy Steinfeld, the executive director of the
Wasserman Center for Career Development at New
York University.
“There’s a sexiness to starting something cool,” she
said. “Now we have people trying to start a Facebook
or a MySpace.
You might be working like a maniac, but it’s going to pay off in status. You’re
going to be famous, providing something people are going to know and use all
over the world.”
Unquestionably, many doctors and lawyers still find the
higher calling of their profession — helping people — as well as the prestige
and money, worth the hard work. And the stars in either field are still that:
commanding the handsome compensation and social cachet. But to others, the daily
trudge serves as a constant reminder that the entrepreneur’s autonomy simply
can’t be found in law or medicine.
“We’d all seen the visions, watching ‘L.A.
Law,’ or ‘Ally McBeal,’” said Catherine Kersh, 32, a former litigator at a large
firm in Los Angeles. “It did seem glamorous.”
Reality, she quickly learned,
was different. Ms. Kersh recalled a two-week stretch in which she and a team of
associates were holed up in a conference room with 50 boxes of documents. Every
day, for 12 hours, they fastened Post-it notes to legal briefs.
“You look
around at the other associates, trying to remind ourselves, why did we go to law
school?” said Ms. Kersh, who now works for a nonprofit group that administers
scholarships.
Many young associates, she added, spent their lunch hours
making lavish purchases on NeimanMarcus.com, just to remind themselves that what they did
counted for something.
Life, in fact, was less like “Ally” and more like “The
Practice,” where lawyers work like dogs in a thoroughly unglamorous
setting.
As of 2006,
nearly 60 percent of doctors polled by the American College of Physician
Executives said they had considered getting out of medicine because of low
morale, and nearly 70 percent knew someone who already had.
In a typical
complaint, Dr. Yul Ejnes, 47, a general internist in Cranston, R.I., said he was
recently forced by Medicare
to fill out requisition forms for a wheelchair-bound patient who needed to
replace balding tires. “I’m a doctor,” he said, “not Mr. Goodwrench.”
Make
no mistake, law and medicine — the most elite of the traditional professions —
have always been demanding. But they were also unquestionably prestigious. Sure,
bankers made big money and professors held impressive degrees.
But in the
days when a successful career was built on a number of tacitly recognized
pillars — outsize pay, long-term security, impressive schooling and authority
over grave matters — doctors and lawyers were perched atop them all.
Now,
those pillars have started to wobble.
“The older professions are great,
they’re wonderful,” said Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the
Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday
Life” (Basic Books, 2003). “But they’ve lost their allure, their status. And it
isn’t about money.”
OR at least, it is not all about money. The pay is still
good (sometimes very good), and the in-laws aren’t exactly complaining. Still,
something is missing, say many doctors, lawyers and career experts: the old
sense of purpose, of respect, of living at the center of American society and
embodying its definition of “success.”
In a culture that prizes risk and
outsize reward — where professional heroes are college dropouts with
billion-dollar Web sites — some doctors and lawyers feel they have slipped a
notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and
accountants. It’s not just because the professions have changed, but also
because the standards of what makes a prestigious career have changed.
This
decline, Mr. Florida argued, is rooted in a broader shift in definitions of
success, essentially, a realignment of the pillars. Especially among young
people, professional status is now inextricably linked to ideas of flexibility
and creativity, concepts alien to seemingly everyone but art students even a
generation ago.
“There used to be this idea of having a separate work self
and home self,” he said. “Now they just want to be themselves. It’s almost as if
they’re interviewing places to see if they fit them.”
Indeed, applications to
law schools and medical schools have declined from recent highs. Nationally, the
number of law school applicants dropped to 83,500 in 2006 from 98,700 in
2004—representing a 6.7 percent drop between 2006 and 2005, on top of the 5.2
percent slip the previous year, according to the Law School Admission
Council.
(Maybe they’ve been talking to actual lawyers. Forty-four percent of
lawyers recently surveyed by the American
Bar Association said they would not recommend the profession to a young
person.)
The number of applicants to medical school, meanwhile, has dipped to
42,000 from 46,000 in 1997, although it has recovered from a low of 33,000 in
2003.
Students are focusing now on starring in their own creations, their own
start-up businesses, said Trudy Steinfeld, the executive director of the
Wasserman Center for Career Development at New
York University.
“There’s a sexiness to starting something cool,” she
said. “Now we have people trying to start a Facebook
or a MySpace.
You might be working like a maniac, but it’s going to pay off in status. You’re
going to be famous, providing something people are going to know and use all
over the world.”
Unquestionably, many doctors and lawyers still find the
higher calling of their profession — helping people — as well as the prestige
and money, worth the hard work. And the stars in either field are still that:
commanding the handsome compensation and social cachet. But to others, the daily
trudge serves as a constant reminder that the entrepreneur’s autonomy simply
can’t be found in law or medicine.
“We’d all seen the visions, watching ‘L.A.
Law,’ or ‘Ally McBeal,’” said Catherine Kersh, 32, a former litigator at a large
firm in Los Angeles. “It did seem glamorous.”
Reality, she quickly learned,
was different. Ms. Kersh recalled a two-week stretch in which she and a team of
associates were holed up in a conference room with 50 boxes of documents. Every
day, for 12 hours, they fastened Post-it notes to legal briefs.
“You look
around at the other associates, trying to remind ourselves, why did we go to law
school?” said Ms. Kersh, who now works for a nonprofit group that administers
scholarships.
Many young associates, she added, spent their lunch hours
making lavish purchases on NeimanMarcus.com, just to remind themselves that what they did
counted for something.
Life, in fact, was less like “Ally” and more like “The
Practice,” where lawyers work like dogs in a thoroughly unglamorous
setting.
Doctors face similar pressure. Complaints about managed care
crimping doctors’ income and authority over medical decisions are nothing new,
but the problems are only getting worse, several doctors said.
“Remember the
‘I Love Lucy’ episode in the chocolate factory?” said Dr. Ejnes in Rhode Island.
“That’s what a medical practice is now like. They keep turning up the speed on
the conveyer belt, and before you know it, you’re stuffing chocolates in your
pockets.”
One doctor responding to the American College of Physician
Executives survey wrote: “I find it necessary about once every month or two to
stay in bed for 24 to 48 hours. I do this on short notice when I get the feeling
I might punch somebody.”
Increasing workloads and paperwork might be
tolerable if the old feeling of authority were still the same, doctors said. But
patients who once might have revered them for their knowledge and skill often
arrive at the office armed with a sense of personal expertise, gleaned from a
few hours on www.WebMD.com, doctors
said, not to mention a disdain for the medical system in general.
“If the
topic comes up in cocktail party talk, you’ll hear nightmare stories from people
as they’ve gone through the system — ‘they gave me the wrong pill,’ et cetera,”
said Dr. Gregg Broffman, 57, a former pediatrician who is now a medical director
of a primary care group in Buffalo. “In terms of my own self-esteem, it feels
like a personal attack.”
EVEN the language of contemporary medicine has
eroded the physician’s sense of majesty.
“What irritates me the most is the
use of the term ‘provider,’” said Dr. Brian A. Meltzer, an internist in
Pennington, N.J., who now practices pro bono on the side, but works full time
for Johnson
& Johnson’s venture capital division. “We didn’t go to provider school.”
Making the erosion of cachet more acute is the fact that unlike law schools
or medical schools, flashier industries recruit heavily on top college campuses,
said Lauren A. Rivera, a sociology graduate student and an instructor at Harvard
who studies career choice among students.
crimping doctors’ income and authority over medical decisions are nothing new,
but the problems are only getting worse, several doctors said.
“Remember the
‘I Love Lucy’ episode in the chocolate factory?” said Dr. Ejnes in Rhode Island.
“That’s what a medical practice is now like. They keep turning up the speed on
the conveyer belt, and before you know it, you’re stuffing chocolates in your
pockets.”
One doctor responding to the American College of Physician
Executives survey wrote: “I find it necessary about once every month or two to
stay in bed for 24 to 48 hours. I do this on short notice when I get the feeling
I might punch somebody.”
Increasing workloads and paperwork might be
tolerable if the old feeling of authority were still the same, doctors said. But
patients who once might have revered them for their knowledge and skill often
arrive at the office armed with a sense of personal expertise, gleaned from a
few hours on www.WebMD.com, doctors
said, not to mention a disdain for the medical system in general.
“If the
topic comes up in cocktail party talk, you’ll hear nightmare stories from people
as they’ve gone through the system — ‘they gave me the wrong pill,’ et cetera,”
said Dr. Gregg Broffman, 57, a former pediatrician who is now a medical director
of a primary care group in Buffalo. “In terms of my own self-esteem, it feels
like a personal attack.”
EVEN the language of contemporary medicine has
eroded the physician’s sense of majesty.
“What irritates me the most is the
use of the term ‘provider,’” said Dr. Brian A. Meltzer, an internist in
Pennington, N.J., who now practices pro bono on the side, but works full time
for Johnson
& Johnson’s venture capital division. “We didn’t go to provider school.”
Making the erosion of cachet more acute is the fact that unlike law schools
or medical schools, flashier industries recruit heavily on top college campuses,
said Lauren A. Rivera, a sociology graduate student and an instructor at Harvard
who studies career choice among students.
This star-system mentality is particularly attractive to college
students, many of whom were reared with the ’80s philosophy that every child was
a potential superstar, Mr. Coleman said. And they want immediate rewards — not
exactly the mentality that will fuel a student through years of medical school,
a residency and additional training for a specialty.
students, many of whom were reared with the ’80s philosophy that every child was
a potential superstar, Mr. Coleman said. And they want immediate rewards — not
exactly the mentality that will fuel a student through years of medical school,
a residency and additional training for a specialty.
Yeah, being a doctor is tough, it's a constant struggle... When you've finally got that degree you are still left struggling... However, on a personal note, being a doctor or lawer doesn't have to be glamorous as they say it should be. Some people just feel content by the fact that they have helped another person. Not all doctors have to ba a 'Belo' or 'Calayan' to find fulfillment in their chosen field.
