You guys are putting doctors on WAAAAY too much of a pedestal.
Several medical schools in the UK, I hate to break it to you, are accepting people with 3 Cs at A level because they are deemed underprivileged:
BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Doctors qualify on access degree
Another dreadful one for it is that St Georges in Tooting. I also personally know of several people who have bypassed the standard school leaving process and gone into medicine as a 'mature student' - don't need much in the way of grades for that - just need the:
Foundation/pre-clinical year - Courses - Students - Medical Schools Council
I can think of about 6 doctors I know that are 'junior doctors' (two who begun as mature students) - In the most part they can't look after themselves - they're pasty, eat appallingly, don't exercise, have zero social skills and seem to just watch things at 'work' rather than do anything - which they will freely admit. They vacillate on 8 month placements in paediatrics etc. What they can do is lock themselves in a room and learn a book. Smashing. Speaking to family friends that are consultants they say the job is mind numbing - it's generally very routine with the same 'spikes' of difficulty that we have in our field.
Anyone who has qualified as an airline pilot will tell you that there is a huge amount of practical assessment early on in the training and career - non stop progress checks. A practical assessment isn't like theoretical assessment - it wasn't until I'd completed pilot training that I realised how easily theory exams are.
Then there's the fact that if a doctor screws up he or she kills one person. If we screw up we kill a lot more. If the doctor screws up they don't take their lives with them. If we screw up, we have it in the back of our minds that we too will die! Just because, with experience, this job can seem a breeze does not mean it is a breeze - that's why we ARE paid well - because we have experience and capacity to perform the job well inside an acceptable tolerance.
All of that said - I agree there needs to be far more filtration as to who can join this industry and who can not. No quotas, no short of bums on seats for courses, no who can afford it - just meritocracy and profile fit.