The Six Habits of Highly Respectful Physicians - NYTimes.com

The Six Habits of Highly Respectful Physicians - NYTimes.com: "The 'three Cs' - courtesy, compassion, and competence - are all too often missing in the modern practice of medicine. And yes, medical schools often are guilty of neglecting at least the first two of these - and sometimes even the third. But the miserably archaic health care system in the U.S. must share much of the blame. We ask physicians to operate within a system in which hospitals often are more interested in profit than in patient well-being; in which managed care organizations place administrative staff without medical training in key positions with the authority to deny or delay critically-needed care; in which obligatory paperwork based on a daunting combination of artificial cost-containment, litigation-avoidance, and cover-your-posterior concerns seriously frays the nerves (and dangerously extends the hours) of nurses and physicians alike; and in which millions of patients delay seeking needed care (and thereby severely complicate their treatment) because of a lack of health insurance coverage."