Why Your Doctor Feels Like A 'Beaten Dog'

Assembly-line patient visits, poor care for the chronically ill, stacks of paperwork, and endless red tape: This is the life of the American physician...

All too often, we conventional physicians dismiss patients with unusual complaints or simply ply them with medicines. Of course, the medical community can’t develop a new “evidence base” if we ignore our patients. It’s an insane medical Catch-22, and patients are getting fed up. Now, instead of turning to the once trusted physician, many Americans are spending billions on alternative and complementary medicine.  Is the medicine we practice simply no good, or are the doctors to blame? The answer might be both.

It’s widely accepted that conventional medicine frequently fails to help people with chronic ailments. It’s set up to fail, as most clinics function as dehumanizing assembly lines better suited for manufacturing cars than treating people. While health care consultants insist on finding ways to enhance “efficiency,” efficiency and assembly lines only make sense if we know everything there is to know about how the body functions—but we don’t...