I just read a thread earlier today in the medical-professionals /r/medicine group of reddit that had a lot of participation from medical people:

"My rural patients are so much more insufferable than my urban ones"

https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1nkb8f9/my_rural_...

It seems that the reasons for missing doctors are... complex.

▲

kashunstva 4 days ago | parent [-]

> My rural patients are so much more insufferable than my urban ones…

I retired from medicine, having spent my career at a well-known institution in the upper midwest of the U.S. Over the course of my tenure there, I took care of patients from all parts of the world, all walks of life. Some of my most cherished patients hailed from rural farm communities. Whatever that commenter’s issues might be, this doesn’t line up with my experience at all. The work of the physician is to tailor their work to meet the needs of the patient by understanding their needs in ways that may be difficult to discern through ways other than empathic understanding.

▲

nosianu 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It is not about that one commenter, I would not have posted it for a single anecdote. I read through most of the comments. While there are voices like yours, the many people having similar things to say as the OP, and what exactly they say, DO make it sound like they have something interesting to say. Given the quality of many of the comments there, I don't think simply ignoring it with a counter-example is correct.

▲

wavemode 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I counted through all the top-level comments with at least 5 upvotes which state a personal opinion on the topic, and there seem to be 15 medical professionals who feel negatively about working in rural areas and 13 who feel positive.

So, if we're using the reddit thread you yourself have presented as evidence of the general sentiment on this topic, I think the parent commenter is correct in arguing that there is no particular universal trend here. These experiences probably have more to do with the simple randomness of where you work and what kind of personality you have.

▲

parimal7 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Reddit and internet forums have a bias for negative anecdotes.

▲

nosianu 3 days ago | parent [-]

Do you have any proof or even just actual argument whatsoever that the very specific thread I linked to has any such alleged problems? Did you actually even bother to read the many comments there? Unlike your single-phrase blanket statement they are actually quite thoughtful. You could learn a thing or to on Internet discussions from that thread.

There was no prediction or conclusion made whatsoever, it was a number of for the Internet quite high quality personal observations. If you are unable or unwilling to accept the personal observations of those people, here doctors, then the issue is on your side.

We also know that there indeed is a significant difference in culture, we can see that in elections and elsewhere. That too is a "known bias", which you also ignore.

For example:

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-electoral-coll...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07430...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban%E2%80%93rural_political_...

So differences in general are real, and you cannot simply dismiss any anecdotes as "bias", especially since there never was a claim for that thread to be anything more than that.

This divide is also not the same all over the globe, the US may be more extreme (example: https://www.uva.nl/shared-content/uva/en/news/news/2024/03/t... -- "Compared to the US, UK and Canada, overall levels of urban-rural electoral divides are still substantially lower in most European countries, due to centrist parties attracting support from both urban and rural areas."). That too has some interesting comments showing this in that thread, with the bad anecdotes coming mostly from US doctors.

	▲	parimal7 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		You should read the comment guidelines for this forum: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

▲

3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]