4mo ago

how do I accept that a doctor earns more than double what I do?

I'm a nurse and oversaw a doctor checking his bank statements: his salary is a bit more than twice what I earn.

This is not a particularly productive doctor, if you listen to several doctors and nurses where I work at. Just today I overheard a group of 3 female doctors ranting about him and how all he does is sitting and playing with his phone, always redirecting us nurses to talk to the other doctors. I was surprised, because I never expected to find so much drama between doctors, them being much more educated than nurses and I never expected doctors, specially female doctors, to use that kind of language.

This lazy doctor earns more than double my salary. It's depressing.

But I also feel like a loser, because even those ranting doctors earn more than twice what I do... and they get to sit for longer than I do.

Regretting my life choices.

Maybe the sane choice here would be to study or to get a certification that means a higher salary?

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81 comments

Don't accept it. It's fundamentally unjust and you're right to be upset.
- It's unjust that someone who spent WAY MORE to get their education and spent way more in time shouldn't get paid way more? What planet is that logical on?
  
  It's unjust that someone who spends their day goofing off and looking at their phone feels entitled to earn twice what a nurse does, just because they had the privilege to get into college.
  
  lol. The thing is you’re taking what this nurse says at her word entirely and not allowing for the decent chance that actually this doctor does do his job cos like if he didn’t he’d be getting disciplined?
  She either watches him a lot of the time which means she’s not working. Or more likely she just sees him when he’s on his phone having a break.
  It’s takes like a decade or longer to become fully trained as a doctor so of course they earn more than nurses. The knowledge you need to have is much more advanced, the responsibility is much larger. If it’s anything like the UK then you have to do incredibly well before in what we call college (16-18) to even get a place on a course which seems to be sort of a little bit what you’re saying. Except scrap “privilege” and replace with “had to have worked really hard and got outstanding grades beforehand in order to get onto a course”.
  It’s like with a lot of professions where you’re not paying the person for working up a sweat. You’re paying them for their knowledge.
  I’ve worked in care, was the lowest paid job I’ve had yet I’d argue the hardest, certainly very physically as well as mentally demanding.
  I’ve also earned twice that wage in a job that was much easier, although could be stressful and I was taking on more responsibility.
  Especially in America which I assume the person is probably from, where doctors are getting sued for shit all the time, it really is a lot more responsibility on top of the years and years of education, debt and knowledge they have to build up to do the job.
  Just sounds like a salty nurse. Unfortunately some people want to pull everyone down to their level rather than raise everyone up.
  Like if nurses unionised properly then they could demand better pay. If we didn’t live in a capitalist society then things would be fairer too, but under the current system, doctors are just far more valuable to us than nurses. Those is the facts…
  
  It's reasonable to assume that people with more status are behaving worse than people with less.
  Power - status, fame, privilege, wealth, etc. - causes neurological changes that suppress a human's ability to excersize empathy. The kind of self-centered behaviour that the nurse describes is typical of a high status inidividual.
  Also, I used to work in health insurance and this story just jives well with the little personal experience I have with medical workplaces.
  
  Final thing: I think you have it backwards. I think the culprits you’re referring to, lack the empathy in the first place, making them sociopaths. This lack of empathy allows them to ascend the ranks stepping on the shoulders of whoever.
  
  Nope.
  I know it sounds wrong when you first hear it, but power changes your brain. Sociopaths are more drawn to powerful positions, but getting power makes your brain look more like the brain of a sociopath when it didn't before:
  https://hbr.org/2015/04/becoming-powerful-makes-you-less-empathetic https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201909/power-blocks-empathy https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/how-power-erodes-empathy-and-steps-we-can-take-rebuild-it
  Becoming powerful makes you less good, neurologically.
  
  I think you’re possibly describing sociopathy. Which is of course more common among the rich and “successful”, politicians are typically mentioned of having higher incidences of sociopathy, than the rest of the populous.
  Because to get up to a certain level you have to be pretty cut-throat. You have to not care about shitting on other people in order to progress.
  But this is the more extreme category of people. Like highly successful politicians as I say are the main culprits people usually mention.
  I certainly don’t think you have to, to simplify things, be a “dick” to be a doctor. I’m sure some are but certainly not all.
  What if one of your good friends decided to train as doctor? You wouldn’t suddenly call them a sociopath for achieving that aim, would you?
  I’d agree there’s a higher incidence of them amongst doctors compared to say… carers. But it’s nowhere near all of them.
  There is also this thing I often hear and have actually experienced first hand (obviously this is not to be taken too seriously as it’s just a personal experience) but people who care for vulnerable people like nurses or carers, can sometimes take those positions in order to gain power over vulnerable people.
  There’s a fair few documentaries that show these kinds of people abusing their vulnerable patients. Pretty disgusting stuff. Imagine bullying say a non-verbal autistic person. There is very little chance that person can defend themselves. They can’t even communicate effectively.
  So much trust is given to these low paid carers, caring for the most vulnerable. You definitely get bad apples there.
  So it’s certainly not only a problem with doctors. Who can be probably a bit more easily found out.
  Just thought about Lucy Letby as an example of an evil nurse with power over the most vulnerable tiny premature baby’s. (Although see some stuff about people doubting her conviction and her not fitting the typical serial killer profile, but that’s a tangent anyway).
  But no I don’t think it’s automatically wealthy privileged people. I hate capitalism as much as I suspect you may do unless I’ve misinterpreted your tone haha. But this is the system we have and going back to the main thing, doctors and similar professionals are valued much more than the lowly nurse or extra lowly care worker who works physically twice as hard but without all the the risks that doctors take.

81 comments