I’m convinced that there has never been a better time in history to be a doctor. However, many doctors use a great part of their time to complain how hard life is as a doctor. They talk about the good old days, when everything was better and easier.

So I put together my top ten of reasons, why this is the best time to be a doctor. Ever. Consider this post an antidepressant for doctors and feel free to share it. 

1. The internet makes us smarter.

   We have any information available 24/7. In the old days there was no internet, no smartphone, nothing. The patient had to rely on the doctor and his knowledge only. If a doctor wanted to be smarter, he had to go buy a book, the right one, and read it!  I’m still a fan of reading medical books, but we don’t depend on it like in the old days.

   Now you go to pubmed and find out in seconds whether histiocytosis X is a risk factor for colon cancer. (It’s not, as far as I know) You can find guidelines, pictures and X-rays, ultrasound videos and so on. Great stuff, you just have to use it!

2. The internet helps us connect with any doctor in the world.

   We can network with other doctors anywhere in the world. Whether they answer your email is up to them. But anyone has got an email address, and they won’t answer if you don’t ask. So give it a try.

3.  We earn a lot of money.

   I know, we are hearing all day long, that the stock brokers and the soccer players and the doctors in any other field earn so much more money than we do. But honestly, I think we are doing OK.

   We can feed our family, have a roof over our heads and go on vacation from time to time. It can always be more, and I’m not really excited about the 70% taxes either, but the truth is we are making good money.

4. There are more specialists around than ever.

   We’ll always need good general practitioners. But the truth is, I really love to send patients to a specialist. They see more patients with the disease of interest and they just know their stuff.
   To help a patient in the ER many times we only have to make the right referral. That’s not as easy as it sounds. We have to know lots of stuff to make the right decision here, too.

5. Our workflow is smoother than ever.

   When a patient comes to the ER, in seconds we can get all the reports on him from any point in the past. Any information is accessible 24/7. We have digital charts. That way we can work while the nurses work on them. We can access X-rays anywhere in the hospital without sending an intern to get it out of the archive.

   All you have to do is master the system and enter your password.

6. It’s a lot easier to show stuff to specialists.

   We can make videos of seizures and show it to a neurologist. (If they ASK me what the seizure looked like, I mostly told them tonic-clonic. Hell, what do I know??)
   We can take pictures of a rash, mail them to the dermatologist and ask them. (That way they don’t have to come over and go back to playing frisbee right away.)
   We can verify our clinical findings by performing CT scans and echocardiographies.

7. We are respected by society.

   Being a doctor will give you respect in any part of society. Of course there are nuances depending on which specialty you are working in (Proctology vs. Neurosurgery). But in general we are respected and that is a nice feeling.

8. If you don’t like it, you can change it.

   We can change our work field and work environment easily. Doctors are needed everywhere. If you don’t want to work in a hospital anymore, you can go into research. You can work for an insurance company. The military (the German minister of defense is a physician). Medical knowledge is needed anywhere more than ever.

9. Work shifts are more and more family friendly.

   Society is aware of the fact that doctors work too much and start to appreciate to have a surgeon, who has slept more than 2 hours in the last three days. Things have changed and will change to the better soon.

10. We get to help sick people.

    Even if you take Number 1-9 away, it’s still the best job in the world. You get to help sick people. Most of them are thankful. That’s always a great feeling

So I have three favors to ask from you:

1. Stop (or don’t start) complaining.
2. Start (or keep on) being thankful and tell everybody how great it is to be a doctor.
3. Share this with any person working in the medical field to cheer them up.

Question: What is your Number One thing you like about being or becoming a doctor? Leave a comment below.