It certainly is not the industry I saw in the 70's when I made the decision to pursue this career. Doctors, lawyers and airline pilots were top career choices. Start a dot.com like Kevin Laufer of Airline Forums or a social media site like Zuckerberg is the way to go these days.
Why hop on an airplane and meet-face-to face when you have Face....Book? Why talk when you can text?
It is what it is. Times change.
ALPA is so unlike the ABA or AMA. It should have made it its primary mission to reach for loftier heights after founded by men of foresight. Unfortunately the association transformed itself into a mere union with all the lesser appealing connotations. With this, prestige is lost to the ongoing struggle to defend and preserve self worth while at war with itself in a void of leadership who have neither the courage or foresight to evolve. So unlike the founding fathers.
With such distractions, the association gives way to a union mentality that can no longer keep pace with evolving management capable of exploiting the union's (not association) capacity to evolve.
How many species exist today because of the capacity to adapt and change when confronted by adversity? What's ALPA's trend over the last four decades?
A medical doctor can make a lateral move within his chosen specialty without depreciating experience by redoing a residency. A practiced attorney makes a lateral move without the need to start at the bottom as a lowly clerk.
A highly experienced airline pilot who is a member of a prestigious (??) National association receives the least regard in any lateral move. That is the festering disease and destabilizing inconsistency of the profession that exploitative management craves. There can never be unity in the absence of uniformity and consistency.
Without unity our collective energy is exhausted in redudent, individual, shortsighted, self-destructive processes that make the real career goal of dignity, prestige, and reward tainted and unsatisfying.
Just look at some of the language and regard displayed here indicative of the presence of disease.
AMA Mission Statement:
Our guiding principles set the aspirations that we endeavor to achieve:
AMA is one enterprise, highly capable, well coordinated and focused on high impact results.
AMA believes that there is a national imperative to chart a successful course for health care delivery that will improve the health of the nation.
AMA embraces the need for change and believes physician leadership is critical to the successful evolution of health care in a patient focused delivery system.
AMA will build on its legacy of leading physician ethics, setting standards for medical education, and advancing medical science to serve as the premier voice for the core values of the medical profession.
AMA has the unique combination of talent with practical skills and intellectual capabilities, the financial resources, and influential multi-sector relationships to be a leading voice in the transformation of health care.
The AMA has a robust House of Delegates consisting of representation from every State and medical society, a solid base of physician members, a thriving advocacy influence, the most revered journals and resources in medicine, and respected practice tools.
Together, we can shape a better, healthier future – not just for patients and physicians, but for the country as a whole.
