What ails the practice of medicine: the Atlas has shrugged

Abstract

Health-care providers are currently facing a huge challenge. At one end they are expending a huge amount of time and energies on health-care delivery including time spent on upgradation of their knowledge and skills (to remain abreast with the field and be able to provide state-of-art patient care), sometimes even at the expense of themselves and their families. On the other hand they are not receiving adequate re-imbursement for their efforts. To compound the problem several "traders" have entered the profession who are well adept in the materialistic approach abandoning the ethics (which currently happens to be the flavor of society in general), giving a bad name to the whole profession and causing severe grief, embarrassment and even dis-illusion to an average physician. The solution to the problem may lie in weeding out these "black sheep" as also realization by the society that the whole profession should not be wrongly labeled, rather a hard toiling and a morally driven practitioner should be given his/her due worth.

Keywords: Ethics; Medical profession; Negligence; Overuse; Re-imbursement.