[whaaswijk]

This is surprising to hear. From my perspective as accomplices scientist being a doctor strikes me as one of the few jobs where you are obviously and directly helping people, thus “making the world a better place” (as we CS folks sometimes like to think we do).

[WJW]

That probably depends heavily on the field and even then, the endless flow of new patients can make it seem hopeless. Sure you patched up two guys today, but there will be five more tomorrow and every day after that.

It's even worse if the patients in question don't just suffer from "unjust" illnesses that just happened by accident but are instead stubborn alcoholics or something like that. You can treat someone for the symptoms of liver failure, but you already know they'll be in again next week because they can't leave the bottle alone. And when this patient dies there will be hundreds more next week.

[nradov]

When my grandfather was in the hospital I got to talking with the patient in the next room, who was recovering from a quadruple heart bypass operation. He didn't like the hospital food, so he convinced his family to bring him a double cheeseburger and fries from the fast-food restaurant down the street. That's got to be a little disillusioning for doctors.