P HOTO COU RTE SY OF DR. SA M BROWN
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Pandemic: A Profession In Peril FORGOT TEN AGAIN WHEN THEY NEED US MOST Wri t t en by Dr. Sa m a n t ha B ro wn Pa rk s
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hen I was still in clinical practice I saw the decline of respect for our profession coming at me in the distance like a thunderstorm moving to shore from across the sea. We went from a (relatively) highly revered position with a few perks (doctor’s lounge, physician parking, once a year doctor appreciation dinners) to being treated like a glorified clerk seated behind a computer screen documenting necessary bullet points for reimbursement and doing anything necessary to improve our Press Ganey scores. Some of us happily “jumped 1 6 | A P RI L / M AY 2 0 2 0
through the hoops” and “took one for the team” to keep the status quo and keep conflict at a minimum. A few (including myself) finally jumped ship and moved on to less fulfilling roles outside of the traditional clinical practice that we loved. If you are not acutely aware, physicians, in general, are pleasers. We want to help. We want to cure. We did not go to medical school for financial reasons. In fact, in 2007 in Primary Care I earned ONE TENTH of what many of finance colleagues earned. We did not go to medical school for the glory. We
went to medical school because we had a drive to solve problems and to help. It is our purpose. We will fight, at our own expense, to do what we feel is right, what is just, and what saves the most lives. However, in this pursuit of honorable virtue we have given up the very tools we need to successfully complete our jobs. We did not stand up to administrators who forced us to see more patients in less time. We did not stand up to ridiculous metrics that treated us as producers and the patient as “clients”. We allowed non-clinical individuals to step in and remove the attributes that
