opinion | It seems that the brilliance of the medical profession has disappeared

The allure of quality is timeless. Kitchens where the most delicious dishes are prepared. Workshops in which giant masterpieces are placed on canvas. Publishers where golden pencils fly around your ears or soccer teams where the prize treasury continues to swell every year. Anyone who’s been lying in bed young dreaming of heroism and a little bravery sets out one day to try and get close to the fire. Hours of chopping onions, cleaning brushes, sorting newspaper clippings or bleaching streaks; Did not matter. Although you were the youngest, the most experienced, and therefore sometimes the most hidden, you belonged to a larger group where something special was being done.

Although doctors’ prescriptions don’t get a star, and even a medical specialist’s salary is much lower than that of Lionel Messi, medicine has always had the same appeal. Picture books full of kids with stethoscopes and plastic scalpels at the ready, determined to one day replace them with real ones. Medicine is still a popular study and thousands of students start each year in the hope of fulfilling their dream. And when you finally graduate after six long years and can call yourself a doctor, it’s time for you to go into the kitchen. closer to the fire.

rare and wanted

However, the shine seems to have faded a bit. Surgery has always been a popular profession. Work, collaboration and problem solving ability. These are easy things to sell compared to some medicine courses that you only appreciate later in life. Vacancies for seniors (non-trained physician assistant), the “younger employee”, were rare and in high demand, certainly in Randstad. But for a few months now, many vacancies have opened in different hospitals and we have to actively look for young colleagues.

it’s the truth. The alarm goes off at 6 o’clock and you have to change the room with other co-workers in washed suits and a pair of tampons. Completely different from a Van Moof bike and a barista in your office garden flat white With oat milk. There are also a lot of surgeons and old masters who will burden you with all kinds of dumb jobs because they care about their patients. Then sometimes you can’t Walk with vitamin D power for fifteen minutes around lunch time. And if you’re called to a critically ill patient at 5 p.m., who’s also vomiting half of you in misery, that’s not necessarily something to post on your Insta. This is correct. But you belong to a larger group where something special is done.

Making a mistake isn’t fun, but you learn something and others pick you up

Last week I read in the newspaper that about 15 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 25 feel lonely. It is referred to as one of the effects of the Corona crisis. I’m no psychologist, but when I look around I think the pandemic has made us better able to digitally isolate ourselves from the real world. My younger colleagues, and especially the group that chose not to be my teammates, were no less motivated and dreamed of. They seem less accustomed to the daily confrontations, failures, and shameful moments that are irreversibly accompanied by the learning process. Calling someone on duty, misplacing a vein or making a mistake in front of a whole house: it’s not fun, but you learn something in a group and others catch you.

Read also: A good salary is not enough to attract employees

Generations need each other

Perhaps this generation has learned not to have too much faith in their “masters”. They choose more for themselves. Because what can you actually expect from a generation that deliberately continues to use fossil fuels, continues to eat meat and argues among themselves more than they search for a constructive solution?

But the generations need each other. To learn from each other, but also to get satisfaction from things that cannot be captured in a number of likes or prestigious titles. So, are you a young doctor and feeling lonely, come and clean the brushes with us, we will help you flat white.