Healing, calming fears, alleviating suffering, and saving lives – this is what virtually all doctors say led them into medicine, and what they find most rewarding. But increasing numbers of America’s doctors today are dissatisfied, burned out, and unable to provide the level of care they would like to provide to their patients. A recently published book explores these issues.
Written by Kaiser Permanente surgeon Jack Cochran, MD, FACS, executive director of The Permanente Federation, representing the Permanente Medical Groups that employ more than 17,000 physicians, and award-winning health care author Charles Kenney, “The Doctor Crisis” is a rallying cry for health care reform — from a physician who knows firsthand the toll that modern-day challenges are taking on the medical community and the patients they serve.
Because physician dissatisfaction and burnout can ultimately result in poor outcomes for patients, the doctor crisis doesn’t just affect doctors. Solving it is a prerequisite to transforming the U.S. health care system to provide quality health care that is accessible and affordable. The book urges health care organizations to restructure, reduce bureaucracy, and increase transparency and support for physicians, who are uniquely qualified to heal and to lead this evolution from Industrial Age medicine to Information Age medicine.
You can check out an excerpt of the book and join the conversation at the newly launched blog, Physician Leader.
