Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 6

FEATURE
Physician Apathy
Who Cares?
by Mark A. Lopatin, MD
** Reprinted from Bucks County Courier Times **
https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/story/opinion/2021/06/06/
op-ed-physicians-need-shake-off-apathy-and-advocate/7508892002/
" We must raise our voices together if we hope to effect meaningful change. "
" If you are happy with your health care, you do not need to say anything, but if you're not? "
" The only way to do this is through education, one patient at a time, one doctor at a time,
one legislator at a time. That requires all physicians to be involved. The load cannot be
carried by a few. Organized medicine can act as a microphone, but if there is no one standing
behind it, our voices will not be heard. I challenge each physician here to speak out. "
T
hese are all entreaties by me to encourage
physicians to take action against forces that seek
to control the health care dollar at the expense of
the patient-physician relationship. I have met with limited
success. I have often stated that a physician's job does
not end when he finishes caring for patients in the exam
room. Why is it so difficult to get physicians involved and
how does this affect our profession and our patients?
There are so many issues that affect all physicians, yet
so many physicians refuse to take even the smallest
action. Do they not care? Are they too fatigued to do
so? Do they not know what to do or how to do it?
When I was in college, I took a psychology course
with Martin Seligman as the professor.
Dr. Seligman promoted the idea of learned helplessness
as a model for depression. His experiments created
situations where some subjects were administered electric
shocks, but could escape the punishment by engaging in
a particular behavior. In that setting, they demonstrated
the behavior repeatedly. Other subjects were punished
regardless of what behavior they engaged in. Ultimately,
these subjects just gave up and refused to act in any
fashion. Subsequently, these latter subjects refused to
4 BUCKS/MONTGOMERY PHYSICIAN summer 2021
act in other situations even though they did have the
means to avoid the punishment. He postulated that
depression i.e. apathy can be a result of being taught
that no matter what you do, you cannot escape the
shock, and that this is a learned behavior. I can't help
but wonder if physicians as a whole are suffering from
a collective depression due to learned helplessness.
One could postulate that there have been so many
forces exerting detrimental changes to health care that
many of us have simply given up, much like what Dr.
Seligman has described. Burnout has become a popular
concept in health care. Maybe, burnout is simply a
sense of learned helplessness. We feel that no matter
what we say or do, we cannot effect change so why
bother. Furthermore, many of us are so focused on
our individual patients that we cannot acknowledge the
need to address the big picture. Let someone else do
it. I am too busy. This attitude however plays right into
corporate hands, allowing bureaucracy to manipulate
the system for their own desires rather than for the
purpose of improving health care for patients.
There have been some successes. While the American
Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) still insists on
https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/story/opinion/2021/06/06/

Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021

Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 1
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 2
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 3
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 4
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 5
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 6
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 7
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 8
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 9
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 10
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 11
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 12
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 13
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 14
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 15
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 16
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 17
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 18
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 19
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 20
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 21
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 22
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 23
Bucks Montgomery Physician Summer 2021 - 24
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontPhysicianSummer2021
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontPhysicianSpring2021
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianWinter2021
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontFall2020
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontSummer2020
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontSpring2020
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianWinter2020
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianFall2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianSummer19
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianSpring2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianWinter2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianOctober2018
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysicianSummer2018
https://www.nxtbook.com/hoffmann/BucksMontgomeryPhysician/BucksMontgomeryPhysician
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com