I'm a retired hospital R.N. who started my career at my local hospital in the eighties. Each decade that went by, profit became increasingly the priority. My job as a direct caregiver was to assess, document, teach (my patients and their families), and administer medications and treatments, in a compassionate, respectful manner. I retired a few years before the pandemic, leaving the profession years before I had planned to. I was constantly working short staffed, providing horrible care to my patients. I did a two-year stint as a nurse manager. Our weekly meetings with the director of nursing and monthly meetings with the C.E.O. were ALWAYS about money, how to save it, how to make more. I agree with this writer, we should be funding health care around the world. But until profit is taken out of health care in our own country, and the focus and the financial investment returns to the direct care givers (M.D.s and R.N.s), there will continue to be horrible outcomes in our country. — Nora, On A Remote Beach As a family physician, I am grateful that Dr. Gawande places the responsibility for connecting patients with primary care on myself and my colleagues worldwide. Every day, I see patients whose self-imposed exiles from health care have resulted in delays in care of chronic diseases (hypertension and diabetes, foremost among them) and screening for cancer and other treatable diseases. We enthusiastically accept the responsibility for reconnecting our patients with a system that, prior to the pandemic, extended life spans and enabled detection and treatment of diseases at an early stage. Of course, this does nothing for the tens of millions of people without access to health care, owing to economic factors, race, gender, immigration status or any of a number of other inequities. We're going to need help reaching these people. — Famdoc, New York |
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