When the Profession Turns on Itself: What the anger is really about (#557)
- Rick LeCouteur
- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
I was not prepared for the tone of some of the replies to my recent blog posts:
Who will teach them?
Some of the replies were not merely critical. They were weary. Sharp. Disappointed.
At times openly hostile toward specialists, university professors, and academic institutions.
It stopped me.
Because I have spent my professional life in those spaces - teaching, mentoring, examining, arguing for standards, defending scholarship, and advocating for students.
To see academia described as toxic, elitist, disconnected, even discriminatory…
It hurts.
But hurt is not analysis.
So, I stepped back and asked a more difficult question:
What is this anger really about?
Anger Is Often Grief Wearing Armor
When professionals attack other professionals, it is rarely about turf alone.
It is usually about grief.
Grief for:
The way training felt.
The way practice now feels.
The way costs have escalated.
The way clients struggle.
The way compassion has become administratively burdened.
The way ideals feel harder to uphold.
Burnout literature across health professions tells us that prolonged moral strain changes tone. It sharpens it. Nuance collapses. Targets become simplified.
The specialist becomes a symbol.
The professor becomes a symbol.
The teaching hospital becomes a symbol.
Symbols are easier to attack than systems.
The Teaching Hospital as Memory
Some of the comments referenced toxic training environments. Discrimination. Hierarchy. Hostility.
If someone experienced harm in a teaching hospital, whether through racism, sexism, humiliation, or indifference, their distrust is not theoretical.
It is embodied.
And when embodied distrust meets a public conversation about faculty shortages or specialist leadership, the response is not policy debate.
It is emotional recall.
The profession must take that seriously.
Not defensively.
But honestly.
The Gold Standard Problem
Another thread emerged clearly:
Graduates focus on diagnostics.
Physical exams are being bypassed.
Clients cannot afford gold standard care.
This is not anti-specialist rhetoric.
It is economic anxiety.
General practitioners are navigating:
Rising client expectations.
Escalating diagnostic capabilities.
Higher cost structures.
Debt burden from their own education.
Online misinformation.
Emotional exhaustion.
When referral medicine appears financially distant from everyday client realities, tension grows.
That tension is not about expertise.
It is about alignment.
The profession must be able to articulate clearly:
Expertise and spectrum-of-care are not opposites.
Specialization and affordability are not enemies.
But that message must be modeled consistently - not assumed.
Academia’s Incentive Problem
There is also a structural critique embedded in the replies.
Faculty advancement often rewards:
Grants.
Publications.
Research output.
Teaching excellence, while praised rhetorically, is not always structurally rewarded.
Students notice this.
Practitioners remember this.
If academia appears preoccupied with funding over mentorship, trust erodes.
And when trust erodes, authority weakens.
That is not a moral failing of individuals.
It is a systems design problem.
Political and Cultural Fracture
One comment referenced state politics and identity safety.
We are no longer operating in a culturally neutral era.
Geography matters.
Identity matters.
Institutional values matter.
For some, academia feels safe and progressive.
For others, it feels politically constrained or ideologically rigid.
Those perceptions feed polarization.
And polarization feeds professional tribalism.
Social Media Amplifies the Sharpest Edges
Instagram is not a faculty meeting.
It rewards:
Certainty over reflection.
Outrage over ambiguity.
Tribal loyalty over bridge-building.
The loudest comments are rarely the most representative.
But they are the most visible.
And visibility can distort perception.
What the Anger Is Not
Anger is not a rejection of science.
Anger is not a rejection of clinical reasoning.
Anger is not a rejection of high standards.
Even the harshest critiques are defending something:
Physical examination.
Welfare-focused care.
Client inclusion in decision-making.
Practical preparation for day one.
Humane workplaces.
Fair compensation.
Those are not anti-academic values.
They are core veterinary values.
The Deeper Fear
Underneath the frustration, I sense something else:
Fear that the profession is drifting.
Fear that costs are outpacing access.
Fear that corporatization is reshaping norms.
Fear that academia is disconnected.
Fear that graduates are unprepared for real-world constraints.
Fear that mentorship is thinning.
When fear rises, identity hardens:
GP versus specialist.
Academia versus practice.
Corporate versus independent.
The profession turns on itself.
Because it does not know where to turn.
The Moment We Are In
Veterinary medicine is expanding rapidly.
New schools.
Distributed clinical models.
Technological acceleration.
AI integration.
Private equity influence.
Rising tuition.
Shifting client demographics.
Any profession under this degree of change experiences fracture.
The question is not whether tension will exist.
The question is whether we metabolize it productively.
What Leadership Requires Now
Not defensiveness.
Not condescension.
Not dismissal of lived experience.
But clarity.
Clarity that:
Toxic environments must be addressed.
Discrimination must be confronted.
Teaching excellence must be structurally rewarded.
Spectrum-of-care must be central to training.
Physical examination and diagnostic reasoning are complementary.
Specialists and GPs are interdependent.
Academia must remain connected to everyday practice realities.
Practice must respect deep expertise.
And above all:
We must remember that we are on the same side.
A Final Reflection
When a profession begins to speak harshly about its own educators and specialists, it is not necessarily decaying.
It may be stressed.
Stressed systems express themselves loudly.
The real danger is not criticism.
The real danger is silence between groups.
If we stop listening to one another then the fracture widens.
But if we can name what the anger is really about - burnout, moral injury, cost pressures, distrust of institutions - then the conversation becomes about repair rather than blame.
Veterinary medicine does not need less expertise.
It needs more integration.
The profession is not turning on itself.
It is signaling distress.
The question is whether we hear it, and whether we respond with maturity rather than defensiveness.
That will determine the future far more than any Instagram thread ever could.
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