Not sure I see the distinction, but I have met one person who practiced medicine then became a full-time medical ethicist. I had a conversation with her about assisted suicide, although removing ears never came up.
First, I started this in another forum looking for information about how the medical profession views this, not to argue one side or the other. That is a completely different question from whether people should be allowed to do whatever they want to their own bodies. I am not making a case that body mods, even extreme ones, should be impermissible. I am more interested in where is the line where the opinion of the vast majority of the medical profession would be, “That is not something that healthy people should do, and I’m not going to facilitate it.” And I want to emphasize majority, because there will always be doctors at both extremes of any issue.
Yes, that is entirely true of your OP. I was more talking about some of the responses to it from other posters.
Thanks.
The difference I was thinking of:
In some countries a specialty requires specific training and limits what lines of work a doctor may go into. An anesthesiologist cannot become a pathologist without cross training, and vice versa for a pathologist who wants to work as an anesthesiologist.
For Spain and those two specialties that would mean retaking the MIR* and a second four-year residency (some specialties have three-year residencies). While there are people who retake the MIR mid-way through a residency to transfer to another one, or who forfeit a residency because they aren’t interested in the specialties or locations the can access (they hope to get a better slot in the following year’s MIR), I’ve never heard of someone masochistic enough to go the whole route twice.
MIR: exam offered once a year taken by all medical school graduates in order to be able to enter residency. Students get to choose between all slots available nationally in order of their grades, with those locations and specialties considered more desirable going first (to get into Anesthesiology you pretty much need to be able to walk on water, Pathology is easier, Family Doctor is easiest). Grades are only valid for that particular year’s choices and there are a lot more candidates than slots.
Someone without a specialty is highly limited in what jobs they can hold, now that even “GP” requires the “Family Doctor” specialty (those already working as GPs at that time got grandfathered in).
Oh, I see. Well, I am not in the medical profession so I can’t say for certain, but my impression is that there is no board certification for an ethicist. I suppose it is more analogous to a doctor who goes into hospital administration.
Don’t give her any ideas!