Appendix 67 - Motive

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Appendix 67 - Motive

by Michael Greger, MD and United Progressive Alumni

[ Medical School Resources | Appendices | Discussion ]

 

 

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" The medical student is likely to be the one son of the family too

weak to labor on the farm, too indolent to do any exercise, too

stupid for the bar and too immoral for the pulpit. " - Johns Hopkins

University President Daniel Coit Gilman

 

What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

James Hinton, shortly before this eminent English surgeon-to-be

became a medical student, 1841:

 

I feel sometimes a deeper desire than I can express to be in some

way or other the benefactor of my species, and yet I cannot help but

suspecting that pride and ambition have far more to do with that

desire than philanthropy. I do not find in myself the same

willingness to be useful in a way of unnoticed - perhaps despised -

toil as I do in ones that should procure me respect and esteem and

be gratifying to vanity.

 

One investigator concluded that the 640 doctors she interviewed had

decided to become doctors either because they had been good at

science subjects at school or to fulfill the aims and aspirations of

others.

 

Ask if your next act is of any value to the poorest person you know -

Gandhi

 

Some think it's for the money. Physicians were asked why they

thought medical school applications were down again in 1998. One

replied, " Income of physicians is falling; there are easier and

faster ways to earn money. " [802]

 

Another doc:

 

In these times, why would anyone (except the terminally uncreative)

enter a profession that guarantees a decade of impoverished,

undignified servitude, followed by an increasingly uncertain future,

with incomes practically legislated to decrease?

 

Only if the stock market goes down, will medical school applications

go up.[803]

 

Others think it's for deeper reasons.

 

From 'helping the needy' to 'needing the helpless'[804]

 

From the British Journal of Medical Psychology:

 

Knowing that one is a physician allows people with a very shaky self-

esteem to find a niche... it becomes a crutch to their self-

esteem.... Being needed by their patients may reinforce a sense of

grandiosity, but it is [an extremely fragile mechanism,] a process

which has to be endlessly repeated, and being so dependent on one's

patients to maintain a sense of self may generate feelings of anger

and resentment towards them.[805]

 

From an article entitled " Physician Heal Thyself " :

 

The factors that motivate us to become doctors are often those which

later lead to a kind of stoical and compulsive unhappiness. The

inordinate need for prestige and power and the poorly controlled

aggressive and hostile drives lead inevitably to professional and

emotional disaster.[806]

 

http://upalumni.org/medschool/appendices/appendix-67.html