Professors of Medicine. You would think, given the positions in which they work, that they would be the free thinkers but they are the ones with the most restricted thinking. In my experience, Professors of Medicine are the worst at selling a fixed consultation. They are the most sub-specialised members of the medical profession.
They teach and pass on to young doctors these same attitudes and methods. Worst of all, they weed out any young doctors that don’t fit their mold. They encourage and enforce the habits of remember and recall the facts and discourage or even reject anyone who might display any genuine problem-solving ability.
Human beings have a tendency to be attracted to people who remind us of ourselves, but the medical profession take that trait to an extreme.
If I were blind-folded and with some device to disguise their voices, I would not be able to tell the difference between all of the doctors that I’ve seen in the last seventeen years, from the General Practitioners right up to the Professors of Medicine at our most significant private hospitals. The senior doctors, including the Professors, who do the teaching and the weeding, are responsible for the sameness of the whole profession. The only detectable difference would be the significantly more pompous attitude of the Professors.
“… but all the students would basically nod and agree, and I can sort of understand that because when I was a medical student, there was a tremendous pressure to conform.”
Michael Mosley