Personal Reflections in Healthcare Changes in Attitude

Personal Reflections in Healthcare

Changes in Attitude toward other Health Professionals

When I first started studying healthcare, I had the expectation that everybody who works in the healthcare fields was highly motivated to provide quality care and that we all shared a fundamental commitment to human welfare and patient care. While that is often true, I have realized that is not necessarily the case in many instances. I have encountered fellow healthcare professionals who obviously consider their positions to be little more than jobs that provide paychecks. I have also encountered a type of complacency and lack of attention to detail that seems to be a function of routine exposure. In that regard, it seems that the constant exposure to the same types of patient issues and situations can have a desensitizing effect on some healthcare providers and that it may be difficult for some of them to maintain the same level of concern and care because of the sheer volume of patients we see over the course of a career (Hamric, Spross, & Hanson, 2009). I intend to make every effort to avoid lapsing into that type of attitude in my career.

Useful Knowledge and Insights to Advance American Healthcare

I have come to the conclusion that the way we provide healthcare in the United States is substantially inferior to the way that many other nations do, particularly those with national healthcare systems, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, to mention just a few (Reid, 2009). Perhaps even more important than the fact that we lack a national healthcare system to provide adequate care to all, we also approach healthcare from the treatment perspective instead of from the preventative medicine perspective. While this is changing, we seem to be far behind other developed nations in that regard. Similarly, whereas other nations (such as Britain) emphasize results in their provider compensation framework, in the U.S., we still adhere to a pay-for-services model that cannot possibly provide the same type of motivation to furnish the highest possible healthcare services because in our system, the provider does not have a direct personal stake in patient outcome (Reid, 2009).

However, the most important insight that I believe is necessary to improve American healthcare from a systemic perspective is the need to reduce the influence of private health insurance in healthcare. Under the current approach, the cost of medical services continually increases, precisely because the private health insurance industry has no real competition, such as from a "public option" once promoted by President Obama (Reid, 2009). Closely connected to that is the tremendous influence of healthcare lobbyists in Washington (Kennedy, 2006). As a result of the combined dominance of private health insurers and the influence of their thousands of lobbyists in Washington, typical health insurance companies extract approximately one-third of the total cost of healthcare services in the U.S. (Kennedy, 2006; Reid, 2009).

By comparison, the government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, despite their deficiencies, operate at approximately one-tenth the administrative costs and absorb only approximately two or tree percent of total expenses administrated. The difference is all profit for the private healthcare industry (Kennedy, 2006; Reid, 2009) and that is obviously an unsustainable and inequitable system when as many as forty percent of Americans cannot afford health insurance and as many as 50,000 die every year from the consequences of treatable or manageable illness and disease (Kennedy, 2006; Reid, 2009).

Ethical Obligation to Patients, Family, Profession, Organization, Society, and Self

I have learned through my studies and practical experience that the ethical obligations of healthcare professionals extend far beyond the direct relationship with patients (Hamric, Spross, & Hanson, 2009). We must always consider the way that our delivery of care affects other stakeholders, including the families of patients, our fellow healthcare providers, our employers, and the entire American healthcare system. Many of the decisions we make have ripple effects that go beyond the immediately apparent consequences of our actions.

While many of us in this profession have a natural tendency to sacrifice for the welfare of others, I have also learned that sometimes that impulse can be detrimental to our well-being and to that of people in our lives, especially dependent family members. Our profession is often highly stressful and one of the inevitable consequences of vocational stress is lack of attention to detail and early career burnout. Therefore, in addition to our obvious responsibilities to our patients, we also have a responsibility to maintain our own health and welfare so that we can be as productive as possible in our chosen profession.