[HN Gopher] Suicide Reverberates Among Young Doctors
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       Suicide Reverberates Among Young Doctors
        
       Author : ViktorRay
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2025-04-27 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
        
       | inglor_cz wrote:
       | Suicide was a major risk factor among young _female_ doctors even
       | in the aughts when I was young. The gender disparity was stark,
       | at least in Czechia.
        
         | watwut wrote:
         | Overall gender split among completed suicides warry between
         | countries. You can't entirely transfer it as too much depends
         | on local specifics.
        
       | MyPasswordSucks wrote:
       | Medical school and residency is extremely stressful for extremely
       | stupid reasons.
       | 
       | Medical school is still rooted in the 1950s in a lot of ways,
       | with an emphasis on memorization which is just patently
       | ridiculous in an age of smartphones and search engines (not even
       | factoring in the advent of LLMs). Residency involves working
       | shifts that are best described as absolutely insane, in an
       | environment that would be stressful enough as a five-hour shift,
       | for little pay and even less prestige.
       | 
       | Doctors should absolutely be able to handle stress, and I can
       | appreciate some amount of "hell week" ritual to make sure all
       | graduates are battle-hardened, but all reports I've seen indicate
       | that the current state of affairs has way too much fire in the
       | trial-by-fire, and the trial itself dwindles on way past the
       | point of any benefit.
       | 
       | It ends up producing doctors who are very, very good at doing a
       | lot of busywork on deadline and getting yelled at, but aren't
       | always the greatest at human intuition or thinking outside the
       | flowchart, which is often to the detriment of patients.
        
         | mainecoder wrote:
         | It is correct that reforms are needed. It is interesting
         | however that this generation has the lowest mental toughness,
         | since the standards did not necessarily increase but the people
         | changed and could not handle the stress, wait until the tough
         | times come.
        
           | watwut wrote:
           | Did the standards actually "not increased?" It is very easy
           | to just assume younger people cant possibly have more
           | challenges then we did. And very hard to admit when they
           | actually face harder competition then we did.
        
           | esseph wrote:
           | "This generation has the lowest mental toughness"
           | 
           | If you are in the US, in the past 25yr:
           | 
           | * 9/11
           | 
           | * 25y of constant combat deployments around the world
           | 
           | * 2008 recession
           | 
           | * 2026-ish recession
           | 
           | * Loss of company pensions and stability
           | 
           | * Massive housing crisis in availability of type of homes
           | needed, and costs - builders are only incentivized to build
           | upper middle class+ housing in many areas
           | 
           | * Gig work where people are working 3 jobs with no benefits
           | or retirement becoming more popular
           | 
           | * College financial cost unsustainable
           | 
           | * Massive increase in school and public shootings
           | 
           | * Covid
           | 
           | Any ideas of stability in US society that may have come from
           | their parents simply does not exist anymore. The path of a
           | middle class life for most people in the US is gone.
           | 
           | A gazillion more things I'm not thinking of.
           | 
           | I'm getting close to 50, and any time somebody talks about
           | how "x,y,z generation is weak", not even 99% of the time, but
           | 100% of the time, I know the person saying that is simply
           | incompetent.
        
         | impossiblefork wrote:
         | Why do you think they should be battle hardened?
         | 
         | Should violinists be? I really doubt it. What about truck
         | drivers? It doesn't seem obvious at all. Tired people make
         | nothing but bad decisions, and inducing someone to work when
         | they're tired other than due to, for example, war, should
         | probably not be permitted. But if so, they should probably be
         | on stimulants, just as fighter pilots sometimes are.
        
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