A Medical Doctor working in a Corporate environment is like an actress starting to do porn

This post might not be of much interest for you without any interest at all in the health care industry, overseas or in Japan. But since the blog is so fragmented anyway you just can skip it if you're not interested.


Outside of Japan, thinking of Europe and the US, it is not extremely unusual to have full blown certified medical doctors leaving the patient treating setting of hospitals and clinics, going into corporate jobs full time, putting their skills to use in the field of sales and marketing. Just in my company I know quite a few working in central functions (and a few working locally in their country subsidiary). It is usually seen as somewhat impressive and these M.D.s are not perceived as failures or "traitors" for leaving the call of healing for the call of selling and making money.

However, in Japan, it is extremely unusual to have a certified M.D. taking a job as a corporate man, working extra as some form of consultant is perfectly ok, but not going full time Salaryman.
The other day I talked to a Japanese friend and former colleague from the consultancy. His father is a quite respectable hospital manager and certified M.D. of a quite large hospital in south Japan and apparently he often gives his opinion of corporate M.D.'s; "An M.D. who doesn't work in a hospital or university is mentally unstable, has some form of complex or did something really wrong so he couldn't work as a doctor any more. Never trust such a person!".

The view is similar to that of an "actress" going into porn, taking a step from a revered and perceived classy profession down to something somewhat similar but dirty and only about the money. In Japan, M.D.s are treated with such respect that it's hard to imagine why anyone would leave that position to go down to the dirty squabbling and bargaining of a corporate Salaryman.
So, if you have any M.D. friends gone corporate outside of Japan, please feel free to retell this little anecdote and make sure that they are aware how they would be perceived if it had been in Japan!

(Bonus points if you can identify the medical procedure in the picture!)