Stereotypes

Since entering the medical profession I have learned there is a lot of competition and, dare I say, contempt amongst physicians.  I had no idea until I started clinicals this year and have had the opportunity to see physicians bash each other time and time again.  Here are a few examples of what I've learned.  Note: these are NOT my stereotypes, but ones that definitely exist.  I do not agree with many of them, and there obviously are exceptions to the rule, but they are pretty amusing.

1. Pediatricians hate surgeons.  In their minds, surgeons exist only to torture their little, precious patients and are the real enemy, not the disease.

2. Cardiologists think they are God's gift to mankind.

3. Surgeons think OB/Gyn physicians are butchers.  They get so little surgical training compared to a surgery residency, there is no way they could do a good job.

4. Everybody hates Dermatologists because they work ~30 hours a week, have no call, work no weekends, and make 4x as much as the average physician.

5. Neurologists are obnoxious. 

6. If you like people and have an ounce of personality, then you don't go into Anesthesiology, Radiology, Pathology, or Emergency Medicine.  Basically, you don't do the "shift work" fields of medicine.

7. It's Emergency Medicine versus the world.  I have to say this is the strongest rivalry in medicine.  I have had at least 5 different physicians in different fields ask me what I am going into, and then respond, "Oh thank God, not Emergency Medicine."

8. Family physicians are the stupid people who can't get into any other field.

9. Psychiatrists are lazy.

10.  Internal medicine doctors think surgeons don't know how to think.  They are nothing but a good pair of hands who have mastered a skill, and their brains bring nothing to the intellectual table.  Surgeons think internal medicine doctors never do anything, they just sit there all day wasting people's time and resources by taking days to diagnose pneumonia, only after ordering a battery of tests to rule out the most crazy diseases in the world.