Too Much Business

Ever hear a doctor complain of too much business?  Internal Medicine doctors like me are trained to take care of chronic illnesses in adults.  The short list includes diabetes, emphysema, high blood pressure heart disease and asthma.  

These are diseases I can manage with a pile of pills and a longer list of tests.  Sometimes when I read the back of a shampoo bottle “lather, rinse and repeat” and think of my day.  “Chat, prescribe and repeat”.  No problem I can treat your diabetes, your lung disease and all those other things.  The problem is, it seems like there isn’t enough of me to go around.  The number of people calling my office that don’t have a doctor is increasing. When I’m visiting with medical students and high school students I am painfully aware of the long time between thinking about medical school to completion of a residency in Internal Medicine.  For years I’ve tried to mentor and groom students to be Internists.  But my experience locally mirrors what I see nationally, we are headed for trouble.  Less than 1% of medical students want to be General Internists like me.  It used to be closer to 40%.  Then we have all these baby boomers, they are just getting ready to really need us.  Too much business, what a pickle.

Part of the solution has to be prevention of disease, not just treatment.  This must happen because of the exploding population, the exploding cost of medical care and because medically speaking, it is the right thing to do.  Just one example is smoking. The treatment of smoking related illnesses is never as good for people as convincing them to quit before they have problems.  Keeping the equipment you have in good shape is always better than trying to fix it.

No gimmicks, no voodoo, scientific research has clear guidelines with proven ways to keep people healthy:

1. Don’t smoke
2. Exercise every day
3. Keep your weight down.

If you need help to do these three things, you are not alone.  Visit with your doctor, consider getting a health guide, but make a plan to change.

You have to do your part, I’m getting older and I can’t find enough students that want to do what I do.