Posted on 09/18/2007 11:15:14 AM PDT by JZelle
On top of his 10- to 12-hour workday, Dr. Phillip Proctor rotates being on call to cover his surgical specialty in the emergency room at Providence Hospital in Northeast.
"I might have to cancel patient hours if I have to go into surgery, depending on when the surgery takes place," says Dr. Proctor, a urologist in private practice in the physicians building at Providence and chairman of the hospital's Operating Room Committee. "It does impact your daily business."
This impact comes, in part, from a shortage of surgeons faced by hospitals and emergency facilities nationwide. To address this shortage, hospitals such as Providence are paying physicians who serve on the on-call panel, says Dr. William Strudwick, emergency room medical director at Providence Hospital.
Fifteen years ago, physicians who took call duty could expect to build their practice from patients they served in the emergency department and to get paid for their services, Dr. Strudwick says.
"The chance they would get the type of customers to help them build a practice has become less and less," he says. "The underinsured and the uninsured, who do not have access to primary care, are sicker when they get to the emergency department. They are harder to take care of, and it's more of a liability to care for them."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Pretty soon there won't be any. Atlas shrugs
Greedy lawyers. liberal judges, and a litigious society have just about killed the best medical system in the world. The socialized nightmare is coming.
That's hard to do.
Tell him to get an MBA from a top 10 school and go work on Wall Street, he will be making Doctor money by the time he’s 26.
Not sure what you mean, but they’ve added written essays to the test. He had 800 verbal, 720 math, 770 essays and can do whatever he wants. But it likely won’t be medicine for him or most other good students of his generation.
Kids.
Sorry. I guess I’m old. I just remember when it was just math and verbal and a perfect score was 1600. Your boy has great scores.
Very sad to hear. These are the minds most needed by medicine but are pushed away by corruption.
Not to worry. Hillarycare will fix this problem. *she said sarcastically*
So discouraging your son from medicine is a good thing? And don’t call me out on this one. I’ve been there and done that, with a ENT father who discouraged us in the 1970s. I think it’s wrong to discourage a bright young person from pursuing medicine. It’s the only career that will never go into recession, it’s often very rewarding from a non-monetary perspective, it’s a career that is respected by most lay people, and it pays fairly well. I know the ropes, coming from a medical family (grandfather, father, uncles, cousins) and with a general surgeon wife who was something of a pioneer in finishing 5 years of general surgery training in 1985 (an arrogant men’s club, for sure) and practicing now for 22 years.
Yes, there are greedy SOB lawyers, liberal know-nothing judges, ignorant juries, and the rest of the litigious society. And, we face the specter of leftwing ideologues like Hillary Clinton trying to impose their will on the majority of America in the interests of the few, which will be a disaster. However, in my experience, if you are good, listen well, and take care with your patients you will do very well. Money isn’t everything, and we desperately need physicians who are actual Americans - as opposed to the plethora of FMGs from India, Pakistan, and elsewhere - to carry on the proud traditions of medicine in America.
I was just going to say that we should be able to get a great number of sugeons from Pakistan or Palestine, countries like that.
Eliminate the utterly unconstitutional residency system, go to a free market for graduate medical training, and the problem will be solved. Of course, socialized medicine can’t function without the abusive overworking of young doctors staffing hospitals. I’m not holding my breath for this to change, since the existing population of MDs are overwhelmingly either pro-socialized medicine in one form or another, or pro-hazing in that they stubbornly insist that requiring insane work hours of residents is “good for their training” despite reams of medical and other research literature showing otherwise. It’s getting really scary to be a patient in need of hospital care.
I've seen doctors that are miserable and those that are happy. It's an honorable profession and the flexibility of career options is immense.
Plastics, sports medicine, orthopedic surgeon, novelists, emergency room doctor, etc...etc...
you are given the tools to use your skills to help people and are paid well for that gift.
If he goes into it for the money, he's in trouble. Because anyone that is willing to work the hours that training involves and does it for the money , might want to get an MBA and fight their way to the top putting in 36 hour stretches of work on and off for 5-7years after graduate school. There are very few corporations that will work you harder than a residency program.
Let your son be a doctor. Who knows how many people he'll help in his life? I think it would be easier to quantify than other professions.
Didn’t Billary’s first plan have something in it that told med students what they would specialize in based on the needs of the country...?
Two trends help to explain the “shortage” of general surgeons:
1. More women are going to medical school but women are less likely than men to choose surgery as a specialty.
2. Many surgeons and surgery-certified physicians are devoting a greater fraction of their practice to lucrative, elective cosmetic procedures to avoid hassles with insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Don’t go to a tertiary care center. Instead, support your local practitioners by going to a good, large local hospital where you won’t see a resident but you will see an experienced private physician. Skip the Mayo Clinic, stay home!
It’s not an issue of whether he’s doing it “for the money”—it’s a matter of high malpractice insurance rates, risk mitigation that limits patient interaction, and dealing with PI attorneys- these things are ruining the freedom to treat and are driving good doctors out of the profession.
***Didn’t Billary’s first plan have something in it that told med students what they would specialize in based on the needs of the country...?***
Wouldn’t be surprised.
You can bet she’ll force all physicians to be trained to kill the unborn.
Free Health care will be really great when there are no doctors.
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