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I think importing doctors from poor countries gives you doctors with lower than average amounts of empathy. Seeing human misery up close creates calloused human beings.
I'd be ok with writing a 30 day high dose script of dilaudid that a terminal patient could take all at once to kill themselves with, but the physical act of administering that lethal dose is where I draw the line. If they need help let the family do it.
I hope euthanasia never becomes legal here because I wouldn't like that in my job description and I wouldn't like to interact professionally with anybody who is ok with that. I wouldn't want to work alongside a high-kill-count sniper or kamikaze-drone operator either.
I think I've got plenty of empathy, or at least the average as doctors go. That being said, while empathy is always nice to have in a doctor, I'd personally prefer one that was incredibly competent at addressing your problems even if they weren't tearing up over your plight.
Would you say that a doctor who volunteers for the MSF has lower empathy because of their experience with crushing poverty and disease? Probably not, though I'm happy to note there are selection effects involved. What about one that grew up in an inner-city ghetto but was bright enough to enter med school? Is that a bad thing?
I've seen crushing poverty, and when I volunteered to transfer to one of the largest hospitals in my home country (to work for free), I saw things that emotionally wrecked me. As the essay notes, you either harden your heart or exsanguinate.
It didn't make me a worse doctor, quite the contrary. I went out of my way to help people, and still do.
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