What are Veeky Forums thoughs on medicine and the medical career?

Only because of the prospects of getting educated in the UK to move to more profitable places, like the US.

So why is it a meme in the UK

Because of the way the NHS treats its doctors and healthcare in general?

expand, im an ignoramus

Good post. The only thing I would add is the amount of debt that is typically undertaken to pay for med school, followed by low-pay in residency. (That said, the pay and duration of residency in many specialties is comparable to that of a post-doc or two.) But, you're guaranteed a high-paying, stable, secure job.

I'm a neurology resident thinking about quitting every day.

Your transferable skills are few which might prohibit a career change already pretty early.

Most respected profession mostly translates to being bound by responsibility for other people's health which implies absorbing patients' and relatives' frustration, anger, and mistreatment, and "going the extra mile" because that's what doctor's do.

The hours and the content of the job will isolate you from your non-medical peers by psychological changes in yourself but also by the perception of some of them that you are now "something better". Thus your inclusion into the incestuous and dysfunctional "medical community" grows stronger and stronger. Your workmates become your dysfunctional, abusive family. Your boss is a psychopath and your coworkers are backstabbers. You get used and if you don't use other people you're doing it wrong. The nurses act out their revenge fantasies on junior doctors like you. Malicious gossip is omnipresent.

Technically you could use your high income and high-status job as a means for getting easy pussy, but you are too exhausted and you don't anymore have the time or energy to pursue girls. You don't know what to talk about outside of medicine. You no longer have the easygoing funny playful mindset and you just feel old and are happy when you have a little bit of free time.

You get to see other people's lives in a unique way but at the cost of not having an own life. If you're female your chances of becoming a spinster are >50%, if you're male it depends, but your children may grow to hate you because you obviously prioritised something other than them.

OTOH you can indeed sometimes do something obviously Good For The World, which is a very special privilege, and you have one life plan that covers everything, some people like that also I guess.

>Potential satisfaction of giving a parapeligic their legs back through spinal surgery

That doesn't happen. The recovery from spinal paralysis depends mostly on the initial degree of paralysis. Plegia is total paralysis (ASIA score 0) and has a bad prognosis with regard to regaining muscle function with and without treatment. Most spinal surgery in spinal trauma with paraplegia aims at preventing secondary complications.

Not OP, but medicine is not a meme. The NHS is not kind to doctors, though. Very long, odd hours.

You have to fucking love it to pieces because its absurd hours for like 2 decades in the prime of your life. If you love it then those will be amazingly spent but if you are just in it for the money then it will be shit.

>dentist
>doctor
Nice meme

dentists go to med school same as any other doctor

You're thinking of oral surgeons, they're specialist physicians.

Dentists go to dental school and receive a DDS, while physicians go to medical school and get an MD.

It's not a science. ~80% of medical "science" is a scam, dangerous and drug companies often directly promote sickness to sell drugs. They operate with "best practice", i.e. like tribal doctors in the jungle, e.g. "we don't know exactly why aspirin works but take it anyway".

Not sure if bait or just an idiot...

> I have no argument
back to /b/ kiddo and get the fuck out of /science/

>Go to doctor
>tell him that my head is hurty-hurty
>tells me to take some aspirin and if it persists for a week to return
>become outraged because he doesn't know exactly how the aspirin works
>shit in my hand and chuck at him
>post on Veeky Forums

>"we don't know exactly why aspirin works but take it anyway".
But we know

Veeky Forums - Career advice

no it is not

>high pay
>strong union

anything else

The problem with neurosurgery is that none of your patients really get better and a lot of them are very sad cases. Very depressing.

Source: friend who is a NS

>"we don't know exactly why aspirin works but take it anyway"

lol what?

> doesn't know about en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostaglandin

> current year

Dumb career choice, unless you are passionate about it. You'll be studying for 12 years, all the while washing old people's asses, and then you're gonna be doing the exact same thing every single day for the rest of your life.

Doctor of Dentistry

Med fag here, we don't wash old people's ass unless we have to do a procedure down there. Also, if that's the case, I tell the nurses to clean it. up