International medical service trips

Everyone has this ideal about doctors. Or rather, those people who do not understand anything at all about the medical profession have this ideal about doctors. Doctors are supposed to be caring, passionate people who lovingly tend to the sick and wake up at 1am to do surgeries and see ill patients. The more I see real doctors, the less I actually believe that ideal is true. Or anywhere near the truth.

I struggle a lot over what doctors should do, how they should be compensated, what their moral obligations are. I'm not sure how many other medical students ponder over this, but I think I'll be posting a lot about this topic in the future. It's no secret that the most competitive fields are those that are, well, more useless than the others. Why is it that everybody wants to do dermatology rather than primary care? Why do people want to do radiology rather than family medicine?

Why do people want to practice medicine abroad when there is such a great need here at home?

It seems like everybody I've talked to wants to go practice medicine abroad. Whether it's a 2-week winter trip to Africa or a 4-week summer trip to South America, everybody here wants to go to a trip to some far-away "poor" country and "do some good." I'm exceedingly morally torn about these service trips. Students go to these places for a limited time and (in my opinion) do limited good. They mostly do things like, "educational classes" and "check-ups" for the local population with little to no sustained development in any area. And then they come back home and study like crazy so they can get into competitive specialties like orthopedic surgery so they can presumably go help somebody with a broken foot (and make half a mil doing it).

I've asked people why they want to practice medicine abroad or why they want to do these trips and they look at me all funny and ask, "why not? Don't you want to?" as if doing one of these trips is the most natural thing a medical student can do. It seems to me like there are about a million things a medical student could do here in the United States that could benefit many, many more people.

I guess what really bothers me is that... students go on these trips to stroke their moral ego. That is to say, they go and people say, "oh look, what a kind person you are! You went to AFRICA and helped out all those poor people!" And then these same students turn around and spend their career doing something that simply makes them a lot of money. I think the truly morally commendable thing to do as a physician would be to be a primary care physician. This country is in dire need of them and yet, nobody wants to do it. Why is that?

I feel like people should strive to be consistent in their ideals and their actions. If you know and you say that money, status, and fortune are your priorities, I have no problem with you gunning to be an anesthesiologist. But if you say you want to "help people" and do these peripheral things that help get you into competitive programs just so that 10 years later, you can be a 500k/year radiation oncologist, I'm going to have a problem with it. I don't believe there's anything wrong with wanting to make money. Or wanting fame and future. But hiding these true motivations with feigned moral righteousness is just wrong.

-- -- -- -- --
What I'm studying now: nucleotide excision repair