Ask most physician anesthesiologists to share their opinions about the ever-shifting state of health care and you will hear a familiar and sundry list of concerns: increasing bureaucracy, regulatory uncertainty, unsafe patient care changes.
When you take a closer look, you begin to see why quick and easy solutions are rare in health care. The complex landscape of laws and regulations is difficult to navigate alone. For that reason, our specialty comes together to advocate on behalf of patients to improve the quality of patient care. What follows is a brief guide for physician anesthesiologists looking to make inroads into advocacy, and four steps you can take to make that happen.
We start by better understanding one of the key political problems inherent to medicine in general and anesthesiology in particular. An information gap exists with many lawmakers about the practice of medicine, and the gap is often acute with...
