Good Doctors Spot Mistakes, Save Lives

Most everybody I know in medicine is bright, hardworking and altruistic. Many, though, have been beaten down by hundreds of urgent pages, middle-of-the-night phone calls, decreasing reimbursement, more paperwork and less grateful patients. These doctors have become less careful, and their patients suffer as a result.

It is time for my colleagues and me to reclaim our profession. It is time for doctors and nurses to work together, time for electronic records to actually work in providing the right information to the right person, time for pharmacists and nurses and social workers and doctors to see patients together.

You'll notice I didn't say it is time to pay doctors more money. If we can see and help our patients in a more efficient and supportive way, we'll have all the compensation we need.

It turns out that the sponge had accidentally been sent to the pathology lab. An alert nurse, a longtime colleague of mine, thought to call the lab. It all ended well. I hope my profession does, too.

Karl lives in Tampa, Fla.

© 2007