June 21st, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Opinion
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While by no means a representative sample of how we think about physicians, there is a clear pattern to the comments. A lot of people feel disrespected by their doctors…and they are pretty angry.
Here’s what patients (including a lot of former patients) had to say. I attempted to summarize the comments by category and included the top five categories of comments below.
#1 – “Being on time is a two way street.” – patients are expected to be on time for their appointments – why aren’t physicians expected to be on time. Doctors think and act as if their time is more valuable than the patient’s time.
#2 – “Listen to what I have to say.” “Doctors should realize that many patients have more life experience and have done more research about a condition and drug and may possibly know more than them. God forbid!” “If you do not like listening to your patients and getting proper information from them, you are in the wrong business.”
#3 – “Don’t just hear one or two of my complaints.” You try telling the doctor all the problems you have and the doctor stops you mid-way, telling you that he or she will take care of two and to come back again for other issues!” “What about someone like me who is on disability for a multitude of health problems? What then?”
#4 Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
January 21st, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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It’s no secret that without a stronger primary care foundation, the current reform efforts are unlikely to be successful. If anything, it will only delay the inevitable.
I wrote last month that one discussed solution, adding more residency slots, won’t help: it would simply perpetuate the disproportionate specialist:primary care ratio.
A recent op-ed in The New York Times expands on that theme. The authors suggest that not only does primary care need to be promoted, specialist slots should be limited. Simply building more medical schools, or adding more residency slots, without such restrictions will only add to the number of specialists.
Already, many primary care residency slots go unfilled – what’s the point of adding more?
You have to solve the root cause that shifts more students away from primary care: disproportionately low pay, disrespect that starts early in medical training, and poor working conditions where bureaucracy interferes with the doctor-patient relationship.
Until each of those issues are addressed, simply more spending money to produce more doctors simply isn’t going to work.
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
November 23rd, 2009 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Opinion
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In medical schools, primary care continues to be among the least respected fields a student can choose.
No where is that more starkly illustrated than in Pauline Chen’s recent New York Times piece, where she tells a story of a bright medical student who had the audacity to choose primary care as a career:
Kerry wanted to become a primary care physician.
Some of my classmates were incredulous. In their minds, primary care was a backup, something to do if one failed to get into subspecialty training. “Kerry is too smart for primary care,” a friend said to me one evening. “She’ll spend her days seeing the same boring chronic problems, doing all that boring paperwork and just coordinating care with other doctors when she could be out there herself actually doing something.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
While by no means a representative sample of how we think about physicians, there is a clear pattern to the comments. A lot of people feel disrespected by their doctors…and they are pretty angry.
