How Doctor Culture Sinks US Healthcare

The doctors have always come forward and worked heroically whenever there are disasters, calamities, emergencies, or pandemics hit. The dedication and work ethics that they present are worth appreciating and are a hope for a world and humanity that needs them every now and then. However, on the contrary, we also need to consider the facts and acknowledge the fact that the doctor culture has made the doctors held responsible for the rising costs and poor healthcare which is also decaying the standards. Even a healthcare translation company has to look through the important facts related to his issue before finally assigning tasks to their translators.

Systemic issues

It is no more a secret and all the policy experts, physicians and relevant academics accept that the healthcare system in the USA is suffering due to systematic issues. The term systematic may refer to bureaucratic. The clinicians have to take care of the administrative burdens and the authorization requirements that they send. It is extremely vital to reform these deficiencies and leaving these untreated may worsen the situation and the healthcare culture gets sunk further. Also, it is not all about the administrative fixes there are a few more issues to be addressed as well.

Dr. Robert Pearl also believes in fixing the patients rather than helping them in making lives healthier. He is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and also the former chief executive of Permanente medical group. He enjoys teaching at Stanford and has openly discussed the decaying doctor culture in his latest offering “Uncaring: How the culture of medicine kills Doctors and patients.

The arguments and conclusions that Dr. Robert put in front of us clearly tell us that it is imperative to evaluate the values and norms closely that doctors commit to acquire and carry throughout their journey of being physicians. The force of medical culture which is operating from behind the curtains has tremendous influence and effects on patients and physicians. Moreover, it also contains physical, financial, and psychological consequences that may occur live saving as well as life-ending, ironically.

Role of the pandemic COVID-19

It was the pandemic years that made the harms of medical culture even clear. The medical history of the patients as shared by the National Institute of health research told that two third of the patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19 had one chronic disease including obesity, diabetes, heart failure, and hypertension.

In the critical care units, a lot of patients were brought back from the verge of death.  However, the point which is important here is that if doctors and physicians in the country had shown more time and dedication to managing their patients and chronic diseases, they could have saved a lot of them and they might not need hospitalization in the first place.

Important reasons for rotten doctor culture

There are multiple reasons for this decaying medical culture that is being practiced in the USA and patients’ lives are being put at stake. Every sector has been commercialized now and there are black sheep in the medical industry too who put their benefits and worldly gains first and don’t care about the patients’ lives.

A few of the factors include following

Medical insurances

The priorities of the physicians also make the situation tough. One of the other obstacles that demotivate them to put in their best efforts is the reimbursement that they get from insurers. Prevention of a disease is not possible without the heroic efforts of doctors. The efforts of the doctors and physicians are also undervalued and they are not compensated well too which leads to minimal efforts in facilitating the patients. Although good primary care can reduce chronic diseases to half. It is important that the relevant authorities take care of such issues and a decent

Medical bills

Heavy medical bills are another reason which leads Doctors as well as patients to the financial crisis and it is now openly discussed among the concerned people and is no more a secret. As the Gallup poll suggests half of the patients in the US have to worry about their assets and balance in case of one major illness. People are too judgmental when it comes to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries however the roles that doctors play can not be overlooked and ignored. They make most of this reason and patients are blackmailed emotionally in the name of their health and healthy life.

Expensive therapies and treatments

As the articles published in the New England journal of medicine suggest that around one-third of the established medical practices are not any good or better than the less expensive, simple, and rather easier therapies and approaches. Moreover, further reports suggest that more than 25% of the healthcare expenditure turned futile from 2012 to 2019.

Physicians have their own complaints and they claim to put the needs and requirements of the patients first. However, they put the blame on doctors that they ask for unnecessary tests, overprescribing medicines, and also demand risky surgeries, and even the economical and cost-effective approaches can be as valuable. So, doctors when opting for this approach of getting benefitted economically at the expense of the patients, the medical culture gets more disrupted and hypocrisy and double standards are further sinking us healthcare culture of the doctors.

Psychological harms

Eventually, psychological harm is done by such hallow practice. There are a lot of examples that state how doctors were being rude and shrewd to their doctors breaking news about the diseases and the cures possibly torturing the patients mentally. A lot of them hide the truth from the patients to have worldly gains. Though physicians offer hope but only to disappoint later.

According to a study of 70 food and drug administration approved chemotherapy agents’ cancer treatments only tend to extend the lives of the patients to 2.1 months and this time is rather spent in the hospitals. Hiding the truths from the patients has also been an ugly norm of medical practice and culture and this turns more beneficial as compared to that of the patients.

Curing the sinking culture

The curing of this culture is more of a complicated issue as this doesn’t seem an issue to many apparently yet and but is highly influential. This however can be started by the institutes and doctors who are training and educating the physicians.

In order to minimize the risk of the medical culture and how it is inflicted on the patients, the deans and authorities of the medical schools should ensure they implement the strategies which elevate the esteem of primary care and also put great emphasis on the vital role that physicians play. They can also conduct seminars time and again and can place standees as constant reminders in the lecture halls.

However, this situation doesn’t decrease the rising need for medical translation for patients and relevant people who speak or understand a different language. Therefore the owners and businesses should ensure that they hire a healthcare professional translation company to perform the task.

Final words

Rotten doctor culture is making US healthcare sink as the doctors have made a new practice to get benefitted unfairly from the patients. They ask for unnecessary tests and risky diseases and focus on making money rather than working on reducing the risk of diseasing or helping for the better. Dr. Robert has addressed these issues openly in his book Uncaring: How the culture of medicine kills doctors and patients.