This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think people in other fields fail to understand how egregiously poor a lot of NPs are. Most settings they are still supervised or deliberately have low complexity cases sent their way or have some other aspect of the environment that protects them (for instance inpatient NPs just consult specialists for everything and those specialists manage the patient even though the NP is on charge on paper).
Surely they must have some training, and they can't be that bad, right? Like who would let them practice if they are that bad?
They are that bad.
It's been hard to extract the data about this because of financial interests in NPs, and the general difficulty of doing medical research.
So much of medicine is opaque to those outside the field and even inside of it (I know nurses who have been working for 40 years and go "huh" when you tell them the resident has been working 24 hours in a row).
Fundamentally I see midlevels every week who make decisions that would make me go "holy shit you are the worst doctor in your specialty I've ever met," it's near constant.
It sounds histrionic and unbelievable but that's how so much nonsense in healthcare is.
Amazon, google, apple, tons of finances firms have all come into medicine and gone "damn that shit is run so poorly surely we can do better" and then run away screaming.
More options
Context Copy link