misconceptions about doctors

speaking of overworked, i should stop and sleep now, lol ^_^ well, i don't know about doctors being overpaid... maybe some, but in my country, doctors are actually taking up nursing because they aren't earning enough from being doctors. in the philippines, nurses who go abroad earn tons more than doctors. young doctors even earn less than janitors! (a young doctor gets 41 pesos per hour at best; a janitor gets 45 pesos minimum.) some doctors do get lucky and filthy rich, though. i hope i get to be one of those lol ^_^ and you're right on when you say doctors are just people. they scream, they try to destroy other colleagues, they lie to patients, they hide their mistakes. nurses, too. but nurses are actually a bit luckier than most doctors, at least in the philippines. for example, in one batch of 400 junior interns, only 200 become senior interns; out of these, only 120 get to be licensed doctors. and out of those, only about 30 get accepted into residency. the rest? they take up nursing... :o

It is different here in the US. Here nurses are paid way less then the doctors and the doctors get nice cars and houses. Depending on what they do and who they do it for. There is one major draw back money wise... They spend half their adult life re-paying loans that got him through school.

i see... correct me if i'm wrong, but they say that in the U.S., you can pretty much get almost anything you need via loans, like cars, houses, and such. so i guess even educational loans are quite common. loans are not that common here. there are a lot of loans, but they're usually not for education or cars or houses. usually, they're for business. there's also this screening among the medical schools here... they actually ask you how many houses you have, how many cars, and if you think you have enough money to finish med school. i think they only want to accept people who can afford it so as to minimize drop-out rates. the older physicians are earning better than the younger ones (by old/ young, i am referring to the number of years in practice). those are the ones who probably earn more than nurses abroad. ^_^ otherwise, the young ones are really struggling. hmm... after reading your post, i'm thinking of moving to your country! lol ^_^

One local doctor always writes "for _____" in the sig of the prescription. I love that he does it because it's now right on the bottle ... cholesterol, blood pressure, sleep, etc. No one reads the inserts we give them! lol.

that's pretty good insight about doctors. when a hospital is understaffed and a doctor works overtime all the time, he becomes tired, cranky, frustrated, and all in all nt a good person to talk to, lol ^_^ yes, some doctors are not paid enough at all, while some charge way too much. in my country, 11 dollars (roughly 500pesos) is considered a large amount for a mere 3 minute consultation, but that's the going rate here. that's a wage earner's entire day's salary. some charge way more. i'm not saying this rate is too much nor too little; i'm saying that most people can't seem to afford it... unfortunately, doctors should charge that amount. according to medical ethics, it's actually unethical to charge way too little as this drives patients to just one doctor because of his super cheap charges. it's of course also unethical to charge too much - but this doesn't stop some doctors from being unethical at all. that's true; some careers pay much better than doctors, which may embitter a doctor, knowing that he really went through a lot of continuous sleepless 36 hour hospital duty days just to graduate. all the expenses, the books that cost 200 dollars, the expensive tuition of ten years of schooling... all in all, these things run through a doctor's mind when he establishes his going rate. thanks, mariposaman!