Physicians, nurses and all the rest are not 'replaceable widgets.'
The value of the human resource...
Welcome to the new year friends! I’ll have some fresh material this week. Sorry for the delay, just a busy time. Plenty on my mind!
Until then, here’s a column of mine from this month’s Emergency Medicine News about how it’s not so easy to just ‘hire more’ people in critical roles.
https://journals.lww.com/em-news/fulltext/2024/01000/admin___eps_are_replaceable_widgets___an.2.aspx
Excellent essay, as usual. There's another aspect worth mentioning. It's not just the NUMBER of physicians and nurses, but also how much TIME each one has for actual care, versus bureaucratic humdrum. Fill 50% of two doctors' time with red-tape (e.g., billing, excessive EMR maintenance, bickering with insurers, mandatory seminars in DEI and climate change), and you have only one doctor.
I love to read anything and everything you write. Your words clearly describe the story in such a way that I can feel it, feel like I am there experiencing the entire scenario. Or, perhaps I really did and it wasn't just a feeling? In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed working with you and have much respect for you as a physician and coworker. If given the chance, I would take orders from you again in a heartbeat!