“Russian Gynecologist Becomes Billionaire in Cyprus Entity”
If you asked the 13-year-old version of me to make up a profession, this is probably what I would have come up with…
My brother told me that gynecology was his least favorite rotation in med school. He said this was because you have to fake being super excited about every women’s pregnancy, “Oh my god, let me see pictures. She’s so cute.”
Interesting… didn’t think abotu that one
although I see nothing wrong with a smile and a ‘congratulations’
My people from Mainland China flocked to Hong Kong last year for a better quality child birth. I guess the demand for quality is quite inelastic in emerging markets.
It wasn’t to secure some sort of HK residency card for the kid? I can’t tell you how many infants I see on flights coming in and out of India. It’s shocking. But, I’m sure it’s to gurantee overseas citizenship. Also because they are free and Asians like free.
Maybe the Chinese people are just being extra careful with the kid, since the single child policy means they don’t have a second chance to get it right. This is consistent with the Tiger Mom mentality also. If you only have one kid who will support you in your old age, better make sure he/she becomes a rich lawyer, doctor or something.
Makes sense that male gynos would be sick of babies at some point. Maybe that’s why most gynecologists are women - women tend to be care more about the “miracle of reproduction”. That, and women patients probably prefer women doctors poking at their stuff.
My doctor friend told me general practitioners have the most frustrating job among doctors. The reason is they have to deal with unhealthy patients who ignore their advice to stop eating cheeseburgers.
I would have been an anesthesiologist. Your patients are about to be in surgery, so probably they’re scared and won’t talk too much. If you have an annoying patient you may try funny stuff with his dose to teach him manners.
Plus you would be familiar with all kinds of sedatives, which could only be useful in the course of your life.
They probably have the worst job. A friend told me recently about the path to GP.
- Get bachelor’s.
- Go to 4 years of med school.
- Do three years of internship. Here are the rules to an internship (which are frequently broken):
- Can’t work more than 100 hours per week.
- Of the 100, no more than 30 can be consecutive.
While he was doing the internship, he made a whopping $30k per year.
Finally, at 30, he finally became a “real” GP. All this, and he only makes about $80k per year.
I hate this attitude among doctors. It reminds me of personal financial advice where they tell people how much they can save by not buying a cup of coffee everyday (and I don’t even drink coffee). Yeah, they can save some money, but that’s not going to change the fact that some people just to purchase coffee everyday. The sad fact is that the statistics underlying a lot of doctors work has been shoddy (Are eggs good or bad?, cue comedy routine), which means the personal finance advice probably has a better grounding in truth (ie. if you always replace Starbucks coffee with office coffee, then you will save money in the long-run, assuming away those who do business while going for coffee).
There is a huge “illusion of control” bias built-in in the medical profession.
Let’s face it, Nature has had 4 billion years to create the human body, even 25,000 years of medical profession (and I am being generous here) is inadequate at even asking the right questions, forget about answers.
Of course, this is not to say “give up, it’s too complex” but rather “be humble and first, do no harm.” But few doctors seem to understand that; just as no finance professionals will be satisfied with dollar-cost averaging into market indices. They have to tinker with things too complicated and non-linear to model successfully.
Eggs are good (high protein + high fat = lots of calories and nutrition)
Eggs are bad (high fat + high cholesterol = too many calories and artery clogging)
Eggs are good (good cholesterol = wait, not artery clogging, but cleansing bad cholesterol, but wait, it doesn’t matter because your body makes most of the cholesterl anyway.)
And so on…
I agree that doctors can be self-important, just like anyone in a professional field. A lot of medical advice is based on theory and subjectivity. However, it’s hard to argue with advice like “stop smoking”, or “get some exercise and stop stuffing your face with bacon”. Maybe we might think that the health benefits do not justify the lifestyle changes, but the doctor’s job is to improve our health and not other things.
My dad is a doctor. I have two brothers who are doctors. I don’t trust doctors.
I agree that doctor’s are paid largely to fix people, but they also get paid to improve our health by providing advice. My problem is that they are often narrow-minded. They present things simply as improving health = good and not improving health = bad when people’s behavior is more complicated than that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a doctor telling their patient something to the effect of “people who smoke get lung cancer x% of the time and live y fewer years” or “people who eat bacon once a week have y more heart attacks”. That is simple, value-free language using evidence-based medicine. The decision is then left up to the patient to decide how much they prefer smoking or bacon relative to the expected costs. Of course, if the patient asked, “if you were me, what would you do”, then the doctor could still say “stop smoking”, etc.
1recho, a response clearly influenced by Taleb’s concept of iatrogenics in “Antifragility.” Very nice.
I haven’t read any Nassim Taleb. All I know about him is third-hand from media and AF.
His books are unbearable. I’m surrpised he doesn’t refer to himself in the 3rd person yet.
He is an egotistical bastard, but he makes more sense than the canned garbage being churned out by other “economists” and “influential thinkers.”
There are many conditions that doctors and the pharma industry as a whole don’t have a clue about neither their causes nor how to cure them. And the reason is not even that you went to the wrong doctor. Many diseases have a description in the form of: this may be caused by genetics, the environment, a virus, a combination of any of them but we don’t know … and later: diagnostics is made by differential symptom analysis because there’s no test to date, and usually patients may be benefited from X treatment, although consensus hasn’t been reached.
Okay, what do you guys do know then? FML.
Wifey volunteers in a foundation that supports research on one of these conditions. The lead research team is in San Diego and I tell her that I’m pretty sure they use the funding to take the hottest interns out. That’s a better use of the money If you ask me and I’m fine with that. They wouldn’t find anything useful anyway.