Workforce ageism

Finding work when one is old is a problem. There is job discrimination and it comes under different forms. I am a physician and I understand that there is a physician shortage in the United States, but although I have fifty years of experience, I cannot find employment.

I trained as a pediatrician with the requisite three years of post-doctoral hospital training. I am not “boarded”; neither are 23 percent of other American physicians. To become boarded I would have to do two more years in a hospital as a resident. Not only am I complaining about my inability to find employment, the NPs and PAs are doing the job which I should be doing. They have two years of post-college education. I have seven years of more intensive education and so much more experience. Midlevels are nice people. They cannot acquire the knowledge that I have in two years. They are working and I am not.

I have written to the U.S. senators for Washington and my local congresswoman and to the governor of Washington, who have given me no response.

It is obvious to me that my seniority and many years of experience are no longer respected in this country.

Eugenia McGarry, MD

Spokane