Training for health care providers is long and arduous...and unnecessary. I've spoken with many top health care providers (including top doctors at UCSF) and many admit that they'd be better trained in far less time if instead of the endless theory- and arcana-filled program, all that was required was a one to two year program in diagnosis and treatment of the most common situations, training in how to use medical information software to help with non-standard situations, plus guidance, of course, on when to seek help from a specialist.That approach to training would not only be less expensive, time consuming, and painful, it would also increase the number of providers. That would lower their salaries and in turn our health care costs. It would also help accommodate the large number of additional people who will be getting health care under ObamaCare.
Why did the status quo of absurdly long, arduous training come into being? Do health care trainers let alone their students really believe, for example, that a physician needs organic chemistry, calculus, physics, four years of extremely demanding medical school, 100-hour-per-week internships, plus two-to-four-year residencies? The reasons for the unnecessarily demanding programs are:
- Universities like the tuition that come from longer training programs
- The programs are developed by university professors, an anomalous group of people who just love academic learning, arcana, and learning for learning's sake. So they believe, for example, that it would be nice for registered nurses to take a year of inorganic chemistry.
- The professional associations for doctors, nurses, dentists, physical therapists, etc., favor longer training because their profession obtains more prestige. And any added requirements don't apply to existing members--they get grandfathered in, so those associations' leaders, who make the decision to require the additional training, reap the prestige benefits without having to put in any more work.
