[anon291]

It sounds like we need to force the AMA to create more doctor openings and drastically increase the kind of care offered.

For me personally, there should be a substantial difference between a surgeon and a diagnostician. Someone who's only job it is to look at evidence and lab results and walk through what problems it could be. This is a wholly different job than actually doing any of the procedures and would attract new people.

Moreover, I know many doctors who are skilled surgeons but terrible at diagnosis.

Take my own wife, who, up until we figured out what worked for her and found a doctor willing to do it, had miscarriage after miscarriage (seven total), and the fix was fairly straightforward, but it took forever to get there, and most of the obstetricians and MFMs we saw (great surgeons, themselves), were not actually very knowledgeable on the latest research. Nor should they be. The intricacies of various blood disorderse, genetic recombinations, etc, has so little to do with their practice of gynecological surgery that it's crazy we confuse the two. At the end of the day it took my wife and I (both coming from scientific backgrounds and familiar with academia and statistics) took matters into our own hands, got familiar with the data, and suggested appropriate treatments (which have worked several times now in a row, so clearly something changed, unless probability is really trying to screw with us).

[flakeoil]

Yes, there is a big difference between surgeons versus doctors which are good at diagnosing. It's two completely different skills.

I think what is missing is also something in between nurses and doctors, who can take more formal responsibilities than a nurse and offload the doctors.

And there should be a track to directly become a surgeon instead of first become a specialist doctor and then do surgery education after that, those roles should be different. The education for doctors is overall just too long for little benefit.