Our Doctor Friends Will Want to Read This
As Doctors Get a Life, Strains Show
Quest for Free Time
Reshapes Medicine;
A Team Approach
JACOB GOLDSTEIN
April 29, 2008; Page A1
U.S. medicine is in the middle of a cultural revolution, as young physicians intent on balancing work and family challenge the assumption that a doctor should be available to treat patients around the clock.
Walter Cheng, 32 years old, is in the profession’s new guard. Upon graduating from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2004, he bristled at the notion espoused by some senior physicians that a doctor should put medicine above all else. “I thought, ‘I don’t really want to be that kind of doctor.’… My family is as important, if not more important, than my career.”
DOCTORS’ PROGNOSIS
New Generation: Young doctors are pushing to balance work and family life. Changing Medicine: Practices are adapting by creating new, more flexible schedules. For Patients: Doctors may be less exhausted, but also less familiar.
