http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20789360/site/newsweek/
I'm putting this in debates just 'cause we're the way we are, but dh & I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY with this guy (who, BTW, is a doctor).
The reasons for these almost unbelievable figures are multiple and interrelated. Medicine today is complex. Because medicine is a "profession" and many years of training are required to practice it, it is assumed that doctors have the patients' best interests at heart. But without any central database for our care, a patient I plan to operate on next week may be, right now, in a doctor's office getting a prescription for a drug that will make the proposed operation more dangerous. Unless I ask, I'll never know.
In addition, there are many more drugs, procedures and techniques today than when I graduated from medical school in 1970, yet we haven't learned how to keep up with it all. Information travels remarkably slowly in medicine.
Then there is the culture of the medical profession. Uncooperative behavior by physicians has been tolerated by frustrated nurses and hospital administrators whose bonuses are tied to the hospital revenue generated by these doctors. Intimidating behavior has long been a facet of surgical training. I learned from the best: surgeons who would slap residents during a case, intimidate nurses or throw instruments. Most didn't, but some did.
...
Most everybody I know in medicine is bright, hardworking and altruistic. Many, though, have been beaten down by hundreds of urgent pages, middle-of-the-night phone calls, decreasing reimbursement, more paperwork and less grateful patients. These doctors have become less careful, and their patients suffer as a result.
It is time for my colleagues and me to reclaim our profession. It is time for doctors and nurses to work together, time for electronic records to actually work in providing the right information to the right person, time for pharmacists and nurses and social workers and doctors to see patients together.
In addition, there are many more drugs, procedures and techniques today than when I graduated from medical school in 1970, yet we haven't learned how to keep up with it all. Information travels remarkably slowly in medicine.
Then there is the culture of the medical profession. Uncooperative behavior by physicians has been tolerated by frustrated nurses and hospital administrators whose bonuses are tied to the hospital revenue generated by these doctors. Intimidating behavior has long been a facet of surgical training. I learned from the best: surgeons who would slap residents during a case, intimidate nurses or throw instruments. Most didn't, but some did.
...
Most everybody I know in medicine is bright, hardworking and altruistic. Many, though, have been beaten down by hundreds of urgent pages, middle-of-the-night phone calls, decreasing reimbursement, more paperwork and less grateful patients. These doctors have become less careful, and their patients suffer as a result.
It is time for my colleagues and me to reclaim our profession. It is time for doctors and nurses to work together, time for electronic records to actually work in providing the right information to the right person, time for pharmacists and nurses and social workers and doctors to see patients together.
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