Directly related to comments in this article:
Directly related to comments in this article:
- In the US, we just rolled back the work hours limitations recommendations for residents. Like they weren't full of loopholes, anyway.
- Women are forced to make choices that men are not even expected to consider, nevermind asked to consider. Including by other women. In a culture that criticizes and penalizes them no matter what choice they make.
I have opinions on this, obs, but will not rant, here. I certainly hope something is going to change the culture of medicine, but it never has yet. Not even people dying has resulted in a lasting change in the culture of medicine in this country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/doctors-are-human-too.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/doctors-are-human-too.html
- In the US, we just rolled back the work hours limitations recommendations for residents. Like they weren't full of loopholes, anyway.
- Women are forced to make choices that men are not even expected to consider, nevermind asked to consider. Including by other women. In a culture that criticizes and penalizes them no matter what choice they make.
I have opinions on this, obs, but will not rant, here. I certainly hope something is going to change the culture of medicine, but it never has yet. Not even people dying has resulted in a lasting change in the culture of medicine in this country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/doctors-are-human-too.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/doctors-are-human-too.html
I will say the same thing I said on LJ fifteen years ago: as long as America as a whole, and even Trump supporters (a) demand doctors treat everyone, regardless of ability to pay, but (b) refuse to make the kinds of government policy that actually makes such a promise actually affordable, our system will be stuck doing too much for too many with too little, and warp everything - including how it treats the staff on the front line - accordingly. I said it then, it's no less true today.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, there's a reason why countries with universal health care also have non-abusive physician trainee and physician work enviroments. It's the same reason.
Maybe. I think there are things in common with what I'll call a Trump mentality and the machismo culture that continues to dominate overtly and subtly in medicine.
ReplyDeleteI've only worked in the US and Canada, and I will tell you that the trainees there were not treated any better than here in many respects on the ground. Otoh, I've also met and worked with people who were part of organizations like the Resident Doctors of Canada that advocate for the majority of trainees in many ways. Organizations for which there is no correlate in the US. Organizations which are, in fact, actively opposed.
The reality is that the culture can be changed even without universal health care. Look at work hours regulations. The change was made. It worked fine. What happened? It was opposed before it ever happened and it has continued to be opposed. No surprise, then, that they have finally officially convinced the powers that be that the regulations were never really needed and we can just get rid of them.
Afaik, New York has not repealed the law that required work hours rules [for other readers, NY was the only state that ever passed actual law regulating resident physician work hours]. They had them before everyone else, they still have them. I have not seen the research indicating poorer quality of care for patients, nor poorer training of nor poorer performance of residents in NY versus elsewhere. Nevertheless, we have this recalcitrant culture that fought to revert.
Having national health care might help support a lot of changes, but it isn't a requisite.
"Opinion: Doctors are human too"? Well, that's a neat little juxtaposition there.
ReplyDeleteThe machismo culture in medicine seems to be deeply embedded, or perhaps it might be better phrased as "doctors are superhuman and can deal with anything". My aunt ran into it as a both as an attending and as a resident in internal medicine a long time ago, and a lot (but not all) of the toxic attitudes at Therese's workplace are built on it as well.
ReplyDelete