I've been reading Dr. Pat Santy's blog daily for nearly 5 years. She is an experienced psychiatrist and a strong conservative in a profession flooded with liberals.
Dr. Santy is mad as hell and will not take it any more. Here's a taste:
I'm done. If Congress passes Obama's destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.If this comes to pass, it will be true that Dr. Santy hasn't left (public sector) psychiatry, American psychiatry has left her.
I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It's an honest living and Obama isn't interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants--yet.
Let me be clear. I don't believe that people have a "right" to health care; because, what advocating such a "right" basically means is that you believe you have a "right" to my mind; you have a "right" to my professional competence; i.e., you have a "right" to enslave me.
Having chosen to work primarily in the public sector most of my life, I have watched this entitlement and victimhood mentality grow to incredible proportions in parallel with number of laws, regulations, administrators, and oversight agencies. I have watched the decline of personal responsibility and the rise of endless demands and impossible clinical and psychosocial conundrums that I am expected to solve, even if my patient has no desire to change. I have been demoted to the near-mindless activity of pushing pills to the point that I understand why my colleagues see every clinical situation as a biological malfunction--the old adage that says, to a hammer everything looks like a nail, comes to mind. Psychiatrists are the mental health profession's hammer; and drugs are the nail. And, the same powers that tell me to prescribe drugs, warn me against the evil of working too closely with any of the drug companies, for fear I might be corrupted, God forbid, by the dastardly profit motive.
I have watched as the quality of care has inevitably deteriorated even as spending went up. I have watched the system abuse patients and doctors alike--to the point that the frustration level just keeps going up and is simply not worth it anymore.
3 comments:
Then Dr. Santy and other physicians who share his views ought to be organizing some political activity. Most people in this country still respect doctors, and if a lot of doctors started marching on Washington, our apathetic fellow countrymen might actually sit up and take notice.
Please pardon BOTH typos -- Dr. Sanity, and her, not his, views.
Pat's last name is Santy. As a psychiatrist, it's a short hop to a blog named Dr. Sanity.
As far as confusing her for a him, Brigette, you're on your own.
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