Andres Barkil-Oteo, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale, has written a two-part essay on the website KevinMD about challenges facing doctors in the rapidly changing healthcare system.
In his first essay, Have physicians finally joined the working class?, Barkil-Oteo writes about the changing healthcare environment, and the impact it is having on doctors.
He writes, "Physicians are known to be masters of self-sacrifice, and self-control. They undergo years of training and make substantial emotional and financial sacrifices until they complete their training. The reward at the end of the road is a fulfilling job where he or she can treat people who are in need and enjoy the emotional, personal, and financial fruits of their labor. But is this the reality? At a time when the job satisfaction of physicians is at all time low, and burnout at all-time high, alarming depression rates, and a shocking 400 physicians suicide per year in the United States. One can't help but wonder if physicians have finally joined the working class."
In his second installment, Why physicians need to organize, Barkil-Oteo writes, "In this post, I propose two strategies that could help physicians regain some influence over their work and to participate fully not just in the execution of strategy from management but also have an input in creating it."