Teaching Doctors are no good??? Really?

Recently it came to my attention on certain opinions regarding teaching doctors. That means doctors who are teaching at higher institutions which produces doctors and other graduates which are sorely needed in the medical world such as nurses and pharmacist.

A friend of mine injured himself with a deep cut at the forehead and there blood gushing out non stop for a couple of minutes. Thankfully we have a doctor at hand and she was asked to take a look at it. In my opinion it was not that serious as it was not life threatening therefore it is not even a real emergency. (Sorry, if it seems that I sound a cold blooded person) The dear doctor disinfect the wound with the medical kit that is available to her and bandage the wound. She told my friend that it would need a couple of stitches but since it was almost three at the time she did not think he would get the treatment he needed at Emergency Room immediately. So we went ahead on our journey and decided to get treatment at our destination. This would take us around 4 to 5 hours of travelling.

This is where it gets interesting. As the dear doctor depart from the scene to allow my good friend to rest and wallow in misery : ), another friend came over and asked whether we should stop at a hospital or not. As we explain to him that it is not necessary and explained what the doctor told us, he was looking at us in disbelief. He is in the opinion that ER will always treat patients regardless what the time is and the doctor is not good at all since she is teaching rather than practicing. It seems to him that the doctor must have been unable to cope with emergency situations hence the career in teaching.

This is what baffles me. First of all, the injury is not that serious especially when it has been disinfected properly. It must have hurt like hell but if you stitch it at that moment it will still hurt. Second, the opinion that if you are teaching then you are not good especially dealing with emergency situations. Never mind the fact that you might prefer it over practice because of the work schedules and better time with your families.I find it is kind of weird with this kind of thinking because if we have incompetent doctors teaching, would not that mean we would be churning out sub stardard doctors?? If so, then it would be truly alarming since then the lowest level of the sub standards doctors would be the one to train the future doctors and the circle continues.

I admit there are possibilities that there are certain doctors who do not deal very well with emergencies. It really takes a talent on certain level to be able to handle the situations where patients who are injured badly coming in droves or where time is essentially critical. However, to label someone because he or she choose to be in academic line as incompetent is a bit too much and unreasonable. Call me old fashioned, but teachers or those who impart knowledge to us needed to be accorded with at least a certain degree of respect unless they have prove to you that they are assholes and do not know anything about their subjects.

At the end of the day, I am sad that this shallow observation comes from a friend that I thought should have known better.