No matter the specialty, the best doctors make it look effortless and “easy.” Whether it’s suturing a jagged laceration, reading an MRI spine with multi-level degeneration, or delivering a ten-pound baby with shoulder dystocia, the most skilled physicians can handle it without breaking a sweat. But we know it took many years of training, proficiency, feedback, and improvement to master their craft.

I’m not going to argue that surgical procedures are easy, nor unworthy of our admiration and financial reward. Instead, I’m suggesting that non-surgical skills (including preventive medicine, diagnostic challenges, breaking tough news to patients and families, caring for critically ill and dying patients with compassion and excellence while honoring their goals of care) are equally admirable. And should be recognized, and compensated, as such.

I always considered myself reasonably good at basic palliative care, including breaking bad news to families. After all, I’m a child neurologist; sharing tough information is our bread-and-butter. But when I participated in an intensive palliative care training program (Palliative Care Education and Practice, PCEP) to enhance my skills, the director of the program was quick to point out it required practice, repetition, feedback, and repeat. Like college athletes: naturally gifted but relentlessly practicing and coached to reach greatness. We need to learn and practice basic skills until they are second nature, and utilize complicated cases to work through, reflect, and improve.

Just as surgeons tie knots over and over again to reach perfection, and basketball players practice free throws in their sleep, primary care providers hone their exams and anticipatory guidance for routine checkups so they can do them with ease, quickly noticing if something isn’t quite right, requiring additional attention.

One valuable tool available to clinicians is a communication-skills training organization for clinicians looking to enhance their communication skills. They “train clinicians to have better, more meaningful conversations with patients and families, especially during serious illness,” with courses of various cost, topics, experience level (from early learner to faculty development to become teachers), and both in-person and online options. Hospital palliative care teams are also often available for teaching, sending an important message to faculty and trainees about prioritizing these communication and care skills.

I suspect recognizing and appreciating everyone’s varying expertise would go a long way in valuing our colleagues, leveling reimbursement (no one can convince me that talking to vaccine-hesitant parents isn’t as “difficult,” as managing a “difficult” airway, nor just as important), and recruiting medical students into non-surgical specialties. When I was telling someone about interviewing future pediatric residents, they asked if these were people who couldn’t get into other, more competitive specialties. Their significant other was an orthopedic surgeon, no doubt passing along misperceptions of medical training. Our best and brightest represent specialties of all kinds and care for patients of all ages.

Medicine isn’t a hierarchy, it’s a community. We are each drawn to our specialties because we can appreciate the routine, tolerate the annoyances, and enjoy the challenges. We need to appreciate that the skills needed to excel in any domain of medicine are equally difficult and rewarding.

Now, if we could only get society to “value” caregiver duties as well.

Jennifer P. Rubin is a pediatric neurologist.