Defining Status

Status itself has its own interesting dynamic. There are many different "types" of status, if you will. Someone who has some higher moral status may be seen on a completely different playing field than someone who has some sort of financial status. That being said, it is vital that we understand or at least determine what type of status we are referring to when it comes to physicians. Perhaps it's a mixture of many. Perhaps not.

What is our societal definition of status? In the US we often associate money and fame with the characteristic of high status. Doctors have both. They're high paid and though you might not see them splashed on the pages of entertainment tabloids, they live in a type of career fame that is often romanticized from childhood. Little girls can dress their barbies in doctors uniforms and lawyer power suits and other occupations our society creates as socially and intellectually powerful and thus desirable, bearing some sort of dream-like quality. Young men too dream of being able to save lives and play the heroic dashing man who swoops in and brings people back from the brinks of death.

Pursuits of a medical career are often built up in our minds as being superior from a young age. For parents dreaming of a proud path for their child to take, it is a career that is respectable, financially stable, and requires intelligence. For the young dreamers it is a career that boasts of making a hands-on difference in peoples lives and in turn receiving immense gratitude and of course, some degree of higher status in society, proceed by the cashing in of a very favorably sized paycheck.

In essence what I am saying is that this idea of physicians holding a high status is something that is ingrained so much in the culture of our society that it is translated then into the upbringing of our children and etched into our minds as adults.

Is it deserved? As a whole my personal belief is that the conviction of medicine is an admirable one. However, I believe that though an entity itself may be looked upon as generally good and deserving, that does not mean that its means of operation deserve the same admiration, nor does it automatically make those working within it deserving of such high praise.

Point being, I think the concept of physicians having a higher status is so far ingrained in the hierarchy of our society that regardless of the situation with health care and continued negligence by physicians or the growing contributions of physicians assistants, nurses and the like, they will for many, many years to come (if not forever) remain memorialized in our societal conscious as those of a greater caliber.