Ten Ways I Would Change Doctors

1.) Reform medical school education to focus on preventative care including health and nutrition, holistic treatments centered on cause of disease instead of symptoms, and emergency care. Hippocratic Oath training for everyone. I visualize medical school like a religious order or nunnery where charity work and serving the community take precedent over the preoccupation with income.

2.) Oversight committees. Devise workable standards based on nutritional values and healthy practices with oversight committees regulating decision making and procedures. Surgery must be approved by the oversight committee.

3.) Patient-centered care. In my perfect world, patients are treated like valued customers instead of impositions. Get rid of the "meet 'em and street 'em" money-making mentality. (I once worked for a doctor who called it this. It was his goal to have ten minute appointments so he could get patients in and out fast. He didn't think he was making enough money.)

4.) Take the doctors off the pedestals we've placed them. Granted, unhealthy people are desperate for answers but they've created a whole generation of physicians who believe they are omnipotent. (I once dated a doctor who agreed and told me he was like God. I didn't date him long.)

5.) Doctors get charged huge fines for prescribing drugs and supplements as the first line of defense instead of the last resort. The first line of defense should be lifestyle changes.

6.) Patients get paid for their time if appointments are running late or if the appointment is cancelled without a 24 hour notice.

 7.) Require doctors to volunteer a large percentage of their time in underprivileged communities and undeveloped countries as part of their licensing requirements.

 8.) Implement legislation restricting doctors from driving luxury cars. They shouldn't be able to afford them if they are giving to society as much as required.

 9.) Doctors practicing unhealthy lifestyles are restricted from practicing medicine: drug addicts, morbidly obese McDonald's addicts, smokers, alcoholics, domestic abusers, perfume addicts, etc.

 10.) Sleazy Independent Medical Examiners should be eliminated from society, arrested and sent to prison for some Hippocratic Oath rehabilitation. (Or is it a Hypocrite's Oath? I get confused....)

Did I forget anything? I limited myself to ten. Add your own ideas.

Stay tuned for my "Ten Ways I Would Change the Health Care System." I'm on a roll! :)