One out of every four doctors currently practicing medicine in the United States will be packing up his or her stethoscope and white coat for storage in the next five years. But as doctors make their way toward retirement, fewer and fewer express a desire for their children or grandchildren to follow in their professional footsteps: today, only 11% of physicians report the likelihood of encouraging their family members to enter the field of medicine.
In 1973, fewer than 15% of physicians reported doubts about their career choice. By 1981 that had changed, with half saying that they wouldn’t recommend the medical practice as highly as they would have a decade earlier. And by 2012, nine out of ten physicians were unwilling to recommend health care as a profession.
Charles Krauthammer—a previous practitioner of medicine himself—expressed some thoughts recently on the phenomenon. His focus, however, was trained on the negative effects that the electronic health records mandate is having on doctors, forcing them to abandon Asclepios’ Rod and Hermes’ Caduceus for the point-and-click of the computer mouse. The steady degradation of the practice and therefore the profession of medicine that is the byproduct of such requirements goes a long way towards explaining “Why doctors quit,” he writes. The Wall Street Journal, the Daily Beast, CBSN, and others have sounded similar notes, much of which is supported by various studies.
Writing for AEI’s Program on American Citizenship in November, Daniel P. Sulmasy of the University of Chicago drew the strands of similar observations together, explaining “why today’s physicians are a beleaguered bunch,” even at a time when “medical care occupies a proportion of the economy that exceeds even defense, and when physicians’ technical powers and skills have never been greater.” But he digs deeper, to reflect on what he believes is at the heart of the medical malaise—the antiseptic classification of doctors as “providers,” delivering an array of “health services” to “clients” and “consumers.” The practice of medicine, in other words, is increasingly no longer seen as a profession, let alone a worthy-in-its-own-right vocation.
Listing seven external factors that contribute to physician demoralization, in “Physician, Heal Thyself: Doctors in a Pluralist Democracy,” Sulmasy takes doctors themselves a little bit to task for the current situation, for often losing sight of their vocational purpose, and for failing to police their own professional ranks better. The challenges are plentiful, Sulmasy concedes, and require changes in attitude among doctors, in medical societies, the government and even the private sector. But because the heart of medicine remains the encounter between one who suffers (the etymological rendering of “patient”) and another “highly trained and socially authorized person who has publicly professed to help,” Sulmasy believes that the traditional ground for reclaiming medicine as a profession in the best sense remains alive–even if in need of a healthy change in lifestyle.
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