Friday November 13, 2009 at 10:04
“universal health care will be doomed if there are not enough primary care doctors”
—
Doctor and Patient - Primary Care’s Image Problem - NYTimes.com
So true, but not the whole story.
The JAMA study of medical students cited in the article describes medical students looking at the impossible pressures and manifest misery of the typical primary care physician. 98% of those medical students made the logical conclusion to avoid a career in primary care internal medicine.
This is not so much an ‘image problem’ as stated in the headline, but a problem of the typical office practice operating in a broken paradigm. The story is incomplete in failing to note the green shoots of primary care practices discovering new paradigms that free the physician to do what’s right.
My heroes are doctors like Jean Antonucci MD in Farmington ME, John Brady MD in Newport News VA, Aaron Blackledge MD San Francisco, and a host of others who reject the assumptions of the status quo and achieve brilliance in delivering better care.
Medical students who visit practices like theirs come away understanding the potential of high functioning primary care, the better outcomes, the improved satisfaction with care and the satisfaction of living up to the highest ideals of our profession.
