PrintAugust 16, 2013
Medicine's Whiz Kids?
As the federal government adds more bureaucratic dictates to a health care system that already ignores several basic economic principles, I am concerned it may end in a disaster that will define an era, much as the Vietnam War defined my youth.
I began thinking along these lines while listening as a nurse, frustrated by what she calls medicine by computer, explained my recent Kafkaesque hospital experience in light of unhealthy changes she has seen develop in her workplace. I felt that once I stepped inside the hospital a preset script began to unfold one no had the power to stop. This experienced nurse explained why that feeling was valid.
She talked of how hospital administrators have created checklists that are built into patient record keeping systems. Since certain risk factors were present, a battery of tests were automatically called for, because something else might be wrong with the patient and they needed to discover exactly what those...(Read Full Article)
