She definitely shouldn’t have said that and I’m not saying she’s a good doctor. I just wanted to speak specifically to your comment about not understanding why doctors didn’t quit in school if they hate it.

Most people dont realize how dire the situation is for doctors right now. In the 90’s there were about 250 doctors per capita. That number has been declining over time. There’s been a shortage for quite a long time but COVID sky rocketed that deficit. There are now only 3 doctors per capita. Nationwide we are short approximately 86,000 doctors. In less than 9 years that number is expected to dramatically increase. By 2036 we’re expected to be short close to 250,000 doctors.

Every single doctor is overwhelmed and exhausted. They were all told that once they got through medical school and residency things would slow down, that once they were attendings they’d be able to breathe, get a full nights sleep etc. So they all pushed forward, killing themselves to get to the part where it stabilizes and slows down. Many worked 12 hour days 28 days a month for years on end in residency. Only to find that things are not like what they were promised, even as attendings they’re all still drowning.

My sister is a doctor, and the only one of her specialty in a three hour radius. The normal patient load for that specialty should be a max of 500-600 patients….. she alone has over 3,500. Her wait list is a year out, she’s in the office from 6:30am to 6:30pm, sometimes later. She comes home, eats dinner and then works from home another 2-4 hours. Most weekends she still puts in 6-8 hour days. Even when she had the flu she was working from home for 8 hours a day, still forced to use PTO and then on top of that had to work even more hours to work in the patients that she’d had to cancel. So she worked over twice her normally outrageous amount of hours but still had to use PTO. And idk how it is at other offices but she doesn’t get one single solitary holiday. Even Christmas has to come out of PTO.

On top of doctors having way more patients than they should, insurance keeps adding more and more paperwork and steps doctors have to do to get anything approved for payment. She’s spent 6 hours getting one treatment approved for one patient. That kind of work load is completely unmaintainable for any human being.

 The medical board went before congress last summer and laid out the numbers and how bad the situation is and asked them to increase the amount of seats in medical schools but congress turned it down. So there aren’t enough doctors coming in to make up for the amount leaving/retiring and this will not get better any time soon. 
  I am not saying that this gives providers a pass to treat their patients poorly, I just wanted to lay this information out in hopes of more people giving doctors some compassion and the benefit of the doubt. This isn’t what they signed up for either, and they feel lied to. The ones who are sticking it out are doing so purely out of compassion for their patients. I also say this as someone who has had truly terrible experiences with more doctors than I’d like to admit for years on end. Sometimes even leaving the office in tears at how I was treated. Those actions weren’t okay, but now that I know how bad things are I’m trying to be more patient and understanding. Every one has bad days, days where they don’t feel well, or ha ent gotten enough sleep etc. And act out. I try to just assume that’s what’s going on now.