The concept medication is a “calling” has been entwined deeply inside our career. From white coat ceremonies to recruitment posters that includes smiling medical doctors holding stethoscopes, we’re advised that to enter medication is to reply the next objective. This framing is highly effective. It conjures up loyalty, fuels dedication, and builds identification. That’s how the brainwashing begins because it additionally hides a harmful fact: Labeling medication as a calling has turn out to be a device for exploitation.
I’ve little doubt at one level, even lower than just a few a long time in the past, medication was a “calling.” Immediately, well being care has been corporatized to a level the place it’s unrecognizable. Hospitals, non-public equity-backed practices, and well being care firms eat nicely over the work of physicians, nurses, and allied well being professionals and so they hold on the lookout for methods to squeeze extra. They’re profit-driven, not patient-driven. Nonetheless, the language has not modified, we nonetheless say medication is a “calling.” By doing so, establishments can demand lengthy hours, relentless productiveness, and unpaid labor with out the scrutiny or resistance such calls for would provoke in different industries.
This exploitation is commonly delicate and insidious, wrapped within the language of altruism. “Thanks in your dedication and all that you simply do,” hospital directors would possibly say. Or, “Your work saves lives.” To a career steeped within the ethic of service, such appeals are persuasive. They attempt to normalize overwork and make it really feel noble, relatively than untenable.
This framing disproportionately impacts ladies and different marginalized suppliers, who’re already navigating structural inequities in medication. When society applauds the self-sacrificing doctor, it usually expects ladies to soak up unpaid labor, each emotional and bodily, with out criticism. The result’s a workforce that’s exhausted, undervalued, and, in the end, unsustainable.
Even the tradition of drugs itself perpetuates the issue. We inform tales of residents who labored 100-hour weeks, attendings who missed household milestones, and nurses who endured relentless schedules. These tales are framed as inspiration, not as cautionary tales about structural exploitation. Medication, at its coronary heart, is a vital and significant career. However fulfilling work is just not the identical as a divine “calling.” Work is labor. It deserves honest compensation, boundaries, and respect. Framing medication as a calling has allowed firms to bypass these elementary rights and expectations.
Reframing medication as work doesn’t diminish the significance of the career. It acknowledges the ability, intelligence, and compassion required to take care of sufferers. It acknowledges that well being care suppliers have lives exterior the hospital, households to help, and our bodies and minds that may solely maintain a lot stress earlier than breaking. Recognizing medication as work permits us to struggle for a system that helps each sufferers and suppliers. Something much less is exploitation.
Santoshi Billakota is a neurologist.
