With medical students graduating, on average, with almost $160,000 of debt, it’s a major reason why they’re choosing more lucrative specialty practice, which can offer salaries multiple times more than those of primary care fields.
In this clip from The Vanishing Oath, medical economist Amitabh Chandra, Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, discusses that influence, which contributes to a drastic decline of primary care residency slots being filled by American medical graduates.
Of course, it’s not only money. Primary care practice has a litany of obstacles that can contribute to rapid physician burnout, compounded by the fact that good primary care role models are largely absent from academic settings.
But there’s no denying that the salary disparity is an influential factor, and for many students, often a deciding one.
A video excerpt from The Vanishing Oath, a film directed by Ryan Flesher, M.D.:
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
One doesn’t usually look to the Federal Register to define meaning or purpose (philosophers, yes, but bureaucrats?), but the federal government has officially ruled on what constitutes “meaningful use” — for the purposes of distributing dollars to clinicians for electronic health records.
The Wall Street Journal’shealth blog has an excellent synopsis of the rule and the reaction from different interest groups and experts, and the New England Journal of Medicine has a very clear explanation and summary of its key elements by David Blumenthal, M.D., F.A.C.P., the federal government’s coordinator of health information technology. Read more »
FilmAid International provides the children of Haiti what many doctors can’t bring earthquake survivors — a moment to forget about the pain and suffering the last six months has brought. Dr. Jon LaPook reports.
The post focuses on an article by someone who contends that the link between sunlight and skin cancer is a conspiracy by dermatologists and the cosmetic dermatology industry. Dr. Lipson’s highly insightful analysis about the “interview” process and how doctors must act these days on behalf of their patients concludes:
This article shows a misunderstanding of journalistic ethics, medical ethics, and medical science. It’s a disaster. And it’s no surprise that it’s in the Huffington Post.
While this is a medicine story, my question relates to why an organization with a lot of great front-page news so frequently posts medical articles that are wrong and, sometimes, downright dangerous.
What would you be if life gave you a do-over, and stipulated you couldn’t be what you are now?
It’s true, I’m a dreamer. I cried during “Stand and Deliver.” A believer in the power of passionate leadership am I.
Finally, this Saturday morning, I was able to drink coffee, eat bagels and read the paper. Ah, it felt so good. And in doing so I was moved by the WSJ piece on Teachers for America, an organization that allows recent Ivy league graduates to try their hand at being “Kimo-sabes.”
As a dreamer, I often find myself thinking of what I would be after finishing a stint as a doctor, or even more dreamer-esque, what would I be if I wasn’t a doctor. For me, an equally-attractive job to doctoring would have to entail contributing something positive to humanity.
One of the coolest things about being a doctor is asking patients what they do. Not just to find out how much one’s occupation contributes to the inflammatory soup of life, but also to feed a dreamer’s visions. Few patient occupations pique my interest more than teaching. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
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