The Real Epidemic: Not Burnout But 'Moral Injury' Of Doctors Unable To Do Right By Patients

During the course of my husband’s two months of outpatient care, and four days in the local ICU, I realized that the physicians were shockingly absent, and the nurses only a little less so. They had withdrawn into the recesses of the system, remote from patients and families, working at the top of their billing capacity, but walled off from those they were caring for by phone trees and receptionists playing a potentially deadly game of “operator.”

Blaming the medical staff in this situation would be easy, but misplaced. It is the system, designed and overseen largely by non-clinicians, that is to blame.

The full WBUR article can be viewed at this link.