So You Want to Be a........

   DOCTOR

WHAT A DOCTOR DOES

We of the AMA are concerned over the current wild proliferation of doctors in America today. There are simply more than enough physicians to serve our society efficiently already, yet increasing numbers of students think they want to plan for a career in medicine.

Let us get one thing straight. A doctor does not do the following: they do not perform miraculous cures. They do not smile genially at every idiot who walks or is wheeled into his office or O.R. They are not some damn Marcus Welby Doctor Kildare type you see on television.

A doctor cares for, maintains, and treats the human body. They cure diseases that have names they can barely pronounce. They tell people that they are going to die of cancer. They spend all of their time either in their too-small, suffocating office–where the brats scream at the sight of a tongue depressor–or, worse, in a hospital—where the halls are full of the dying and the dead, and everybody and his brother is throwing up. On you, yes, doctor, on you and your nice white slacks.

The doctor also handles—literally handles—blood and internal organs. They give painful hypodermic injections that make them universally loathed. They saw off limbs, analyzes urine and excrement, and cuts open people’s chests. If they make a mistake, they can be sued for amounts in excess of the gross national product of Peru. And there is the ever present possibility that they may contract whatever virus, bacterium, or crud that they are supposedly trying to cure, and end up a patient themselves.

EDUCATION REQUIRED

Begin with four years in college: you must take biology courses (where you will most certainly dissect frogs, pigs, and Christ knows what else) and chemistry courses (where you will inhale things unknown in hell itself).  Then if you are accepted, you will go to medical school. For four years. I say “if you are accepted’’ because you will not be accepted. Nobody is accepted, and those who experience rejection undergo permanent damage to their self-esteem. But no, you want to be a doctor. You want to be some damned Ben Casey or Chad Everett with the stethoscope and the pretty radiology assistants.

Very well. Four years of memorizing the intricate Latin name of every bone in the body, every muscle, every vein, artery, nerve, and capillary. Four years of impossibly arduous study, of learning how to recognize, analyze, and treat seven million diseases.

I beg your pardon? Did you say, “And then I can be a doctor’’? You fool. Assuming that you got your training in an American med school, and not some unaccredited, unauthorized, unsanitary Mexican hellhole where you go through the same basic rigamarole but in Spanish–after med school comes a year of internship. If this term confuses you, try using the word slavery. Good, then: a year as a slave in a hospital. Then comes residency. Not much more than a glorified internship, and it lasts from one to three years. By now you’re what?—twenty nine? thirty? Good. Then you’re deemed ready to work with patients firsthand. Firsthand encounters with disease, pestilence, misery, rot, and filth. Are you happy now?

No, you are not happy, because then you must serve one to three years as a resident in your specialty. And you will have a specialty. So any cozy little fantasies you may harbor about becoming the crusty, irascible old G. P. who delivers babies with a pocketknife should be kissed good-bye.

HOW TO ENTER THE FIELD

Let’s just say that if the gods smile upon you, and you do manage to drag yourself through all the required training, you could still end up starving. Why? Because there are far too many doctors in this country today. This includes those in private practice, at hospitals, and in research. Period.

BENEFITS

No pretty nurses, no grateful relatives weeping with joy. You may, after a few decades of uninterrupted labor, pull in a salary of something between $18,000 and $25,000 a year. Not bad, but construction workers make more. And you have the “satisfaction’’ of serving your fellow man, for what that’s worth. You get to be called  “Doctor’’ instead of “Mister’’ or "Ma'am" if that sort of thing appeals to you. And you receive a nice little shield to put on your license plate so the cops won’t ticket your car while you’re upstairs in some apartment watching an old woman turn green and collapse from heart failure.

You will be entitled to make pompous speeches about “the sanctity of human life, the miracle of a single cell,’’ and other nonsense. And you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I am a doctor.’’ You moron.

(circa 1977)