This assumes that having more doctors will fix the problems and I can tell you it won’t. I’ve unfortunately had to experience what’s described in the article multiple times in recent years, with the only silver lining that I’m not dead yet.
Majority of doctors simply do not go beyond the textbook definition of “standard of care”. You tell them this doesn’t feel like flu? Nope go back with Tylenol and come back if gets worse. Still not getting better 10 days later and you tell them your sinuses are clogged and hurting? Let’s get you Flonase and send you back. Finally you’re half conscious and in the ER almost 3 weeks in? Ohh my bad, should’ve started antibiotics a while ago.
Get transferred to a new urgent care because the one that sent you back with a Tylenol yesterday can’t take you in today because you got worse? Let’s start from scratch and tell you exactly what you heard yesterday and refuse to do more tests.
Most doctors I’ve had to interact with are laughably clueless when it comes to even slightly non standard illnesses. They are highly opinionated and refuse to do things differently. And surprisingly the only good doctors that I’ve encountered are the older ones, sometimes closer to retirement. Maybe something went horribly wrong in the past 50 years but the new ones are terrible. No wonder people lose their lives when they get sent back home with NyQuil and Tylenol.
There was a shift in attitude to where physicians are managing livestock instead of caring for people. It's not great when some of the livestock die, but that's what livestock does... oh well. The psychology of that shift is complicated, multiple factors that are difficult to tease out. But the bad news is that the shift is likely irreversible, it's lasted long enough that the current doctors teach it to the new incoming residents.
The problem at the root is the financialization of everything.
Public hospitals are one thing, there incentive structures revolve around saving money - yeeting patients out of the door far faster than you'd have don in the past, to a large degree made possible by new operation technologies (minimally invasive surgeries).
But private run hospitals? They see you as a cash cow, extract as much money as possible from you. And yes, often enough that includes outright billing fraud.
>Public hospitals are one thing, there incentive structures revolve around saving money - yeeting patients out of the door f
That's a popular narrative, but doesn't much explain many of the variations of this phenomena at all. Women have complained forever that doctors don't listen to them when it comes to their treatment... even prior to the "financialization of everything". It is a popular narrative that it's the moneygrubbers or something like that which causes all the problems in healthcare, but it's not a very explanatory narrative, just a popular one.
Majority of doctors simply do not go beyond the textbook definition of “standard of care”. You tell them this doesn’t feel like flu? Nope go back with Tylenol and come back if gets worse. Still not getting better 10 days later and you tell them your sinuses are clogged and hurting? Let’s get you Flonase and send you back. Finally you’re half conscious and in the ER almost 3 weeks in? Ohh my bad, should’ve started antibiotics a while ago.
Get transferred to a new urgent care because the one that sent you back with a Tylenol yesterday can’t take you in today because you got worse? Let’s start from scratch and tell you exactly what you heard yesterday and refuse to do more tests.
Most doctors I’ve had to interact with are laughably clueless when it comes to even slightly non standard illnesses. They are highly opinionated and refuse to do things differently. And surprisingly the only good doctors that I’ve encountered are the older ones, sometimes closer to retirement. Maybe something went horribly wrong in the past 50 years but the new ones are terrible. No wonder people lose their lives when they get sent back home with NyQuil and Tylenol.