Take your President to Work Week

Received in my email today:

This past week has been horrendous. I have had 5 of seven days on ER call with busy days including 30+ patient office days (half days actually) while instituting and impossible EMR, and doing 2-3 cases each night from the ER and 6 to 7 cases per day in the general OR. As I was driving back to the hospital last night at 11pm for the third time, I thought of a great idea. The American College of Surgeons or the AMA should suggest that President Obama and some of our Congressmen/women join us for TAKE YOUR PRESIDENT TO WORK WEEK! I'm not talking about some p****Mayo Clinic or Harvard surgical service. I'm talking about some grassroots bluecollar down home time on the surgical service of everyman's community hospital. Just follow a general surgeon around for one week, Monday to Monday. He'll see:

1) The EMR slow us down like those puncture strips that cops throw infront of criminal vechicles.

2) The amount of non-reimbursed time that we spend answering phone calls, doing charts, waiting, driving and caring for patients.

3) The complete joke the 80 hour work week is for residents.

4) The incredible effort put forth by the entire medical team at our hospitals and the ridiculous risk we take from from opportunistic attorneys.

5) Just how good our healthcare system is even in the far corners of this country, and how misleading the "experts" are when they see otherwise.

6) Most of all, he will see the good job our doctors are doing before they start to rapidly exit the profession that he is making more and more frustrating every day.

Mr. President, come along for one week and educate yourself before you destroy the good things in our system. As you finish your one week on Monday, I'll remind you that for us the next day is never a day off.

I have a few to add of my own:

7) See how many illeagals we are seeing and taking care of and how they deplete the resources that allow us to take care of our citizens.

8) See the amount of fraud that is our disability system.

9) See first hand the incredible heroism of our police, fire and EMTS who put their lives on the line for others.

10) See how government red tape and Stark Laws have made medicine so expensive.

11) Let the President order the diagnostic studies and be responsible for all the outcomes so he can decide what is defensive medicine or not.