Not my battle

I have a hard time fighting battles that I shouldn't be fighting. Or at least, shouldn't be investing too much of my personal time and energy on because its not worth it.

I used to spend a LOT of time online fighting with antivaxxers, for example, in various parenting forums and under articles about vaccines. But after a while it got so draining and depressing it started to affect my mood and I realized my mental health should not suffer because of others stupidity. Especially because this group is a minority (albeit a loud and vocal minority) and that my efforts made very little difference in changing anyones mind. And in any case, I found the best way to use my influence is to come from a place of empathy and understanding, and sharing my own worries and anxieties about my kids health and wellbeing with people I know instead of strangers on the internet.

However, I always seem to find a new thing to want to fight. Right now that is people who are pursuing medicine who shouldn't be. For example, I came across the Instagram profile of a Canadian guy doing med school in Poland but calling himself "Doctor" and his profile linked to a website of his where it seemed like the articles (all written by him) were written by a real MD. And not only is he not an MD yet, he also doesn't seem likely to ever be a practising physician as he hasn't applied to any post-grad training programs in Canada or anywhere even though he says he's in the 6th (and final) year of school. I even reached out to him under the guise of asking for advice on getting a residency in Canada and he told me he hasn't done anything yet - hasn't even taken the licensing exam! And whats worse is that stuff he was posting wasn't even medically sound. He is a vegan and basically pushes veganism as the cure-all for all health conditions and shares faulty information about animal products and how bad they are for health. For the record, I have nothing against vegans and I think that there is a lot to be said about the benefits of a plant-based or largely plant based diet. But thats not what he was saying. Anyway, it all pissed me off so much that I contacted his university (not mine, thank God) and informed them that they have a student pretending to be a doctor and giving non-evidenced based advice out online. I didn't hear back from them though.

Another thing is how many people I see pursing medicine in my program who I really don't think should be and fighting the urge to talk them out of it. People who are repeating courses and still doing badly, clearly having no or little understanding of basic topics. Even people who are scraping through (often cheating). I worry about them but honestly worry more about their future patients. The problem is that I even LIKE some of these people and think they are nice, fun, interesting people. I just don't think they are suited to medicine.

I was kind of ranting to my husband about it the other day and he was like "why do you care? Just focus on yourself" and I know he is right. But man, it's hard when you see a train wreck about to happen and know there is little you can do to stop it.