Matt Morgan: Is medicine no longer a vocation?

Junior doctors in the UK have recently gone on strike simply in a bid to be paid the same as sandwich shop workers, and the naysayers have been dusting off familiar playbooks used by governments in years past. For those with a genuine interest in truth and in resolving the dispute, any arguments around doctors’ relative pay, inflation, lifetime earnings, pensions, and international comparisons should quickly turn to ash. That leaves only the political choice of where finite resources should be directed. And this is where the actual debate, difficult decisions, discussion—and, hopefully, resolution—should lie.But one claim often waged against doctors can feel like an uncomfortable truth. It is one that needs to be extinguished rather than left to smoulder. When other arguments have been exhausted, cynics retort that “being a doctor is a calling, a vocation, a privilege” and that “vocation has nothing to do with pay.” Are they…
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