top 7 interesting facts about Doctors

Here is the top 5 interesting facts about Doctors : - 

1.        Doctor’s rigorous training ensures at a minimum a very high level of competency and professionalism.  Dr Mohammed Saed of Bradford England practiced as a doctor for over 30 years, during which time he prescribed creosote and suppositories to be taken orally, misdiagnosed everything from heart disease to a brain tumour the size of an orange. A whistle blowing pharmacist finally put an end to his practice (or should that practicing) when he prescribed cough medicine as a scalp tonic.

2.       Male doctors are best.  An analysis of almost 5,000 doctors and dentists referred to the National Clinical Assessment Service over the past eight years because of worries about their performance shows men outnumbering their female colleagues by 3-1.

3.       Older more experienced doctors are better than younger doctors. In a USA study of heart attack victims, mortality rates rose 1% for every two years since a patient’s doctor graduated from medical school.

4.       Doctors are poorly paid. The average salary for GPs is 110k, which compares well with that of a chartered accountant (senior) 100k, Architect 60k and lawyer 52k, and the glamorous newer profession of airplane pilot 63k.

5.       Doctors work long hours. A ‘journal of American medical  association’ study of 2008 saw the hours doctors work on average fell from 55 to 51 between 1996 2008, this fall in hours worked was not seen elsewhere in America professions or business ( which actually saw a rise in hours worked during that period)

6.       Young doctors are no less competent than their older colleagues. Some might think that newly trained doctors would bring many benefits with them. Fresh from medical school, highly motivated, full of enthusiasm, up to date with the latest medical techniques,  and above all well supervised ( therefore less prone to error) . In fact according to an Imperial College London study, newly trained doctors hitting the wards in august cause an 8% rise in mortality.

7.       Doctors are good for you. A persistent but puzzling fact first identified in 1978, the more doctors in a given community the higher the mortality rate. This statistical fact was confirmed by a truly monumental study (Cornel University 2001) which included; 47 Japanese prefectures, all 3,000 + counties of the USA, and 29 (mostly) European countries. The bad news was it found the more doctors in your community the more likely you were to die (the good news ,if you can call it that, was this increased mortality rate was due to a complex combination of factors, many of the centred on the deleterious effects of urban living and not the lethality of doctors).