A couple of months ago, a YouTube video made the rounds called “I Was An MIT Educated Neurosurgeon Now I'm Unemployed And Alone In The Mountains How Did I Get Here?” wherein “Goobie” talks about his dissolution with the medical industry, and I think he speaks to a growing anxiety amongst people in and adjacent to the medical fields (so, everybody). All the flashy tools, towering hospitals and 17.3% of GDP seem to barely take a chunk out of the health problems we all face, let alone put us on par with other nations.
Goobie sees the problem as a combination of a misguided focus on one-time surgical interventions, as opposed to a holistic approach emphasizing nutrition, exercise, mindfulness and the like, and a set of perverse incentives that leave patients overmedicated, overbilled, and still in pain, demanding more medicine. It is clear things must change.
However, change is hard. On a societal level it seems overwhelmingly impossible, especially with the unquestioned authority often wielded by the upper echelons of the industry. It is notoriously hard for patients to evaluate the quality of services they are receiving and find better treatment, and anyone in the field trying to broadly improve the system is constantly fighting against insurance corporations, hospital management, big pharma and public ignorance, all while holding onto a stressful job to try and pay for all of it.
Like it or not, we cannot blame all of our problems on a large and amorphous “healthcare system”. This either unfocuses a movement and often leads to despair about never being able to change something so big and hard to see, or conveys the false assumption that change is only possible through hard work and sacrifice, without analyzing who we are working and sacrificing for. Instead, we could focus on our impacts on those around us, and what we can do to empower their autonomy, both in official healthcare settings but also to our friends, families, and the people we see daily but never bother to form relationships with. This is why I find Goobie’s video so inspiring: he actually took the leap, made a big change, and started to focus on improving people’s everyday lives.
I am not asking you to quit school/your job. We cannot all become nature vloggers, and we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one. Additionally, if you are anything like the pre-nursing, pre-med, and other healthcare students I know, you have structured all of your time around the requirements of the job, or classes to try to get the job. And while the prospect of a leap into the unknown like Goobie’s has a certain literary appeal, most people would rather/are only able to take little steps. There is nothing essentially wrong with little steps, as long as you are always moving forward.
My project with this pamphlet is to provide a first step. I am building a club, connecting people from all walks of life. An explicit place to make new friends, especially among people that you usually don’t meet not only carries the health benefits of having a tight knit community/social connections, but also helps us build the resilient networks that make us less dependent on a centralized healthcare system.
Concretely, the club will look like a relaxed conference, with people presenting on a variety of skills and topics. Each presentation will be followed by a brief Q&A and there will be downtime with plenty of opportunities to meet new people. A potluck will help keep a relaxed atmosphere, and since this is a community service project you would be able to build your resume as well as yourself.
Right now, I am looking for people to present at the first meeting, January 23 4-6 PM. If you want to help get this off the ground by presenting, email me (e.f.saltlake@gmail.com) and let's chat about what that looks like. If you just want to show up, keep an eye out for posters with the location.