Basic Health Access

Eric Levi outlines the Dark Side of Doctoring in one of the most important health care topics of our time. He was led to this blog post after another physician took his own life. The words of the widow of the physician to trace the final steps leading to this tragic loss. These words have the power to help others to understand the process that leads to death for those pledged to life. The following represent a number of resources for physicians and their families as they struggle with the Dark Side. Advice comes from the blog, the widow, 5 Regrets at the End of Life, The Antidotes of Stress, and what we should do as physicians and as a nation. The formula is not difficult to understand - Too little sleep, too many life interruptions, too little time left for family or self, feeling too important, finances too complicated, feeling too inadequate, and eventually leaving too few indications of the final act to come.  Exhaustion, interruption, marginalization, superhuman e...

A recent blog post used a Football Team Analogy indicating the success of the Patriots. This team and coach analogy can be expanded and perhaps others might just see how the players feel about what is happening in health care. Ryan Marling in The Health Care Blog notes "Now a seven-time Super Bowl champion, Belichick has voiced his distaste for overly detailed statistics being used to gauge player or team performance, and instead focuses on how well his players function as a single unit towards the ultimate goal of winning. His motto—“Do your job”—is echoed from his players on the field and in press conferences on a daily basis. He doesn’t ask any single player to win the game, but merely that they do their job, as placing too much significance on a single player’s role fails to recognize the larger picture and is likely to be deleterious toward the goal of winning." Is Do Your Job the Primary Focus Anymore? The harsh reality is that we do not even rate the professi...

The National Academy of Sciences did not shine with the publication of "Democratic and Republican physicians provide different care on politicized health issues." The timing, tone, and content were all wrong. The headline could have been Dems and Reps indicated the same care for six different and usual conditions. Only the indication of difference for three contrived scenarios was used. The timing was incredibly bad. This is not a nice tribute to Primary Care Physicians on Primary Care Week. Primary care physicians are likely shocked to find out that their care is politically driven. Yale researchers obviously know more than they do. The tone is bad across title and abstract. This article is a construct of the authors and is not even about actual patient care. Assumption and innuendo need to be left out and reasonable limitations should be included. The headlines about this article are even worse. The National Academy of Sciences stamp has perhaps led journal...