Physician Suicide in America
Just a post in honor of all my colleagues who have gone down on the front lines. Staring my career as an army combat medic i had no ideal my time spent in hospitals would make my military life look like a cake walk. This is a subject rarely discussed and that is mostly shunned. America is in a crisis and in the midst of that crisis the front line soldiers are the health care workers with the physician at the helm. Administration and corporate mandates have made the physician owned practice almost obsolete. I often joke with my wife that in her country a person without a high school diploma can sell fruit on the side of the road or start a business easily to support themselves but in America it is nigh impossible to be an entrepreneur in medicine now if you are in primary care. Everyone deserves basic human compassion and tolerable work conditions. Just because a person is a high wage earner does not negate the need for this. We actually have a branch of medicine called Occupational Health which is involved in amongst other things assessing work place safety. This while doctors work 20 hour days with little sleep or food under the yoke of mandated healthcare and inefficient electronic medical record systems that are a lot less functional than the smart phones we carry. The next time you go to see your physician remember to say thanks,,, even if you think he or she is an overpaid Prima Donna because equanimity is a universally needed character trait. That and unless we have walked a mile in another man's shoes we just don't know. Medicine and healthcare need more to fix it than just government mandates. We need an overhaul of the democratic spirit of freedom. One nation, under god, with liberty and justice for all. Physicians are by nature fiercely independent stoic people. When this overachieving class starts showing signs of wear it is possibly a barometer or evidence of a more deep insidious attack on the core of our american freedoms. Something that smells faintly of... sniff sniff sniff.... fascism. But what do i know. I'm just an over democracy loving pri maddona right????? RIP brothers of Hippocrates. Your sacrifice was not in vain. Semper fi.
