Many physicians sense that something is just not right about what is happening in medicine, states Jenny Powell, M.D., who became president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in October. “Now many of my colleagues find themselves at a crossroad, feeling alone and confused,” she writes in the winter issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr. Powell runs a busy, direct-pay private family practice with two locations (all clinical, no hospital) in rural Missouri. But “I have been not immune to the issues facing Hippocratic physicians throughout not only the country but the world.”
“Physicians who take their Hippocratic Oath seriously must now search through piles of junk to find good studies, good information, that which has not been colored by political or financial gains…. There has never been a more important time for like-minded physicians, nurses, and other medical caregivers to ‘hang together.’”
“We’ve seen some strange things happen lately,” she observes. “Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest in 1610, ‘Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.’”
Physicians must stand together against a system that would tell all physicians how they may diagnose and treat, with what they may treat and whom they may treat, and that if they resist, they will be silenced,” she states. “These are the times that try physicians’ souls.”
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
Read Full Article: https://jpands.org/vol26no4/powell.pdf
