Responsibility

At this point, it becomes clear why the ROAD to success becomes so popular as the choices of career for the new generation of doctors.

Their job is, to a much greater extend, more sort of time rather than task based. As soon as you finished with the consultation or procedure, there is hardly any continuous responsibility or relation with the patient - not to say their family.

For that consideration, internal physician and family medicine are no doubt the least attractive of all specialties. For surgeons, after an operation is successful and the patient walks out of the hospital, they could call it an end. (In fact, this very happening brought the most of the satisfaction to most surgeons.) For physicians, general or family ones, there is hardly any end of responsibility until the patient becomes bone and ash.

PS. Of course many surgeons hold enduring responsibility for their patients. Similarly, some medical sub-specialists try their best to do away with their patients as soon as an intervention is completed. It is often a matter of their mindset and personality rather than a problem of the specialty.

PPS. The old fashioned way we called surgeons who dump their cases to us as soon as their patients came out from the operating theatre was Mr. Toothpick (牙籤大少). I must say the origin of this term was quite a harassment. I shall leave it to your imagination what that tiny little piece of wood signify.