HPSP part of the PROBLEM ! ? ! ? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[USAFdoc]

I really want to hear how your medical license is being threatened.

If not, take your ball and go home, no one was using it anyway. When you get home tell your mom you’re crying because the other kids didn’t want to play the same game as you did.

1) again, you are completely missing the point ELMERS. Where did I say the doctors license was threatened. The point I was making is that there is a difference in level of responsibility detween the enlisted tech support and the physician. It is the physician's responsibility as to what the outcome with patient care. When something goes wrong, even in the military, it is the doctors name that goes into the national data base regarding law suits. But even more important than that, as a physician, I took an oath to "do no harm". It is MY RESPONSIBILITY to ensure good patient care! And there is the military dilemma: military docs have full responsibility and yet have very little authority to ensure safe levels of support staff etc.

2) as far as your verbal attacks go; you are just another misinformed somebody speaking to which you have little first hand experience. Please tell me when you were the doc, when it was your responsibility, what you did when you were presented with poor patient care and admin looking the other way........

adios ELMER

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Ex-44E3A]

Let me get this straight, Elmer.

You're not Air Force, nor are you even a physician, and you're going to sit here and talk trash to an experienced veteran doc like USAFdoc? That's too funny... did you pull the same stunt on your DI when you were in basic?

If not, take your ball and go home, no one was using it anyway. When you get home tell your mom you’re crying

So... it's not that the AF system has problems, it's that docs who complain are big fat *******. Ah... how marvelous... the mask slips at last. We've only encountered that particular slander from every starry-eyed med student, recruiter, and yes-man who inhabits these boards. Sorry... but you can cram that pejorative macho crap right in your ear. When you're a terminally-degreed professional, and have a physician's level of responsibility without the commensurate ability to control the environment and outcomes, then you can dispense your wisdom to us "crybabies." Until then, it reflects rather poorly on you that you're unable to hold your tongue.

Medicine ain't about macho bullsh*t, son... it's about taking care of the patient. The sooner you learn that, the better. Military physicians are objecting to their practice environment because it makes taking care of the patient very difficult, and sometimes impossible. If you're one of those who wants to dismiss everybody else's objections in some kind of penis-measuring contest, then I sincerely hope you don't make it through medical school; the profession of medicine isn't well-served by people who are more interested in ego than truth. You may want to reexamine your loyalties.

Insulting others while patting yourself on the back for "sucking it up" is not a devastating argument... it's pathetic, particularly when the people really suffering in a broken system are the patients. It's not all about you.

You're dismissed.

 

[edinOH]

I really want to hear how your medical license is being threatened.

If not, take your ball and go home, no one was using it anyway. When you get home tell your mom you’re crying because the other kids didn’t want to play the same game as you did.

Dude, you embarrass me. You are one of my bretheren as a corpsman. Please quit making an ass of yourself.

 

[MedicalCorpse]

If not, take your ball and go home, no one was using it anyway. When you get home tell your mom you’re crying because the other kids didn’t want to play the same game as you did.

Some may wonder why I have been absent from the forum over the past month. This aggressively ignorant post by an ex-corpsman who presumes to know more than board-certified military and ex-military physicians regarding the tragic problems which are killing U.S. military medicine dead is pathognomonic of the mindset of too many posters here. I simply got tired of hearing the same worn-out, pathetic arguments from people like Elmer and a1qwerty55:

1) Our troops are the best, so shut up. See number 11 below.

2) My prior experience as (an infantryman/medic/corpsman/R.N./CRNA) was completely different than that being described by almost every single current and former board-certified military doc on this forum. My remembrances are more valid than their experiences on the ground as physicians, so shut up.

3) If you had cared enough about military medicine, you would have stayed in to continue to be commanded by non-clinicians who order docs to violate international standards of medical care and ethics. You left, so you have no right to talk.

4) Conversely, if you are on active duty still, it is a violation of the UCMJ (Art. 88) to say anything which might possibly be construed as a criticism of the National Command Authority. Shut up and get back to your clinic, Major, or else I'll rat you out to your superiors.

5) It can't possibly be as bad as you say, because the military claims publicly to run a "World Class" medical care organization, and they wouldn't lie, right? So you whining military and ex-military docs are the liars. I'll prove you wrong when I graduate from residency in seven years and join the ranks of active duty attending physicians. Until then, I'll just call you whining misfits.

6) "Change is in the air" (a favorite of a certain someone here): Yes, things started to go to crap ten years ago, with the imposition of OMG and the creation of that Frankenstein's monster we know as TRICARE. Yes, after 9/11, years of sheer poor planning at the highest levels by multiple Surgeons General and their ignorant Pentagon lackeys were unmasked. Yes, many patients actually died at MTFs and overseas as a direct result of the poor staffing/training/policies/empowerment plans implemented by those who sought to "do more with less", until they tried to do everything with nothing. HOWEVER, Change Is In the Air. Finally, after all these years, as a result of HPSP quota achievement failures and the <10% retention rate of active duty docs, the ignorant idiots who presided over the rape and murder of U.S. military medicine have miraculously seen the light, and have implemented the following dynamic steps to resurrect military medicine from the grave:

1> A committee with no command authority has been appointed to study the issue.
2> There is no step 2.

Therefore, because change is in the air, shut up about the current facts on the ground.

7) By posting to this forum dedicated to "Medical Corps Issues" in such a fashion as to give a true impression of the tragic state of military medicine to prospective HPSP/USU students, you are helping the terrorists. The U.S. military relies on a steady stream of young, idealistic, intelligent but inexperienced physicians of low rank (O-3) in order to give bodies for the old, ignorant, unintelligent, non-clinical O-5s and O-6s to boss around. The U.S. military has spent less than one penny on retention of experienced active duty docs for every dollar it spends on fancy videos and website banners to recruit newbies. If prospective HPSP/USU students learn the truth before they sign their lives away, the generals in the Pentagon might be forced to tear themselves away from their Outlook inboxes to do something to improve the pathetic state of military medical care in 2007. We can't have that. So shut up and go away.

8) I am a recruiter who gets paid to sweet talk folks into signing away their lives as young medical students. I don't want you to tell them they will certainly be commanded by nurses. I don't want you to tell them about the pathetic lack of support staff, funding, and infrastructure they will find when they finally leave their residencies. I don't want you to tell them that their clinical judgments will be overturned and micromanaged by non-clinical pinheads with shiny eagles on their shoulders who last touched a patient when the medical students were in elementary school. So shut up before I miss my quota of uninformed bodies.

9) I am a current USU/HPSP student. I don't see any of the problems MedicalCorpse, Galo, USAFdoc and others are talking about. I am very happy with the saccharine lies being spoon fed to me here in my cozy little hobbit hole in the LRC. I am sure that the sagacious and perspicacious Evolved Beings of Supersapient Light which are our military medical leadership will have completely fixed any small problem which might affect military medicine before I graduate from USU, let alone residency. Because I don't need to worry about the current state of military medicine in the field, shut up so I can have more space to whine about my pathetic stipend/VHA issues. Oh, and does anyone know about the neuroradiology fellowship match status in 2010?

10) We fixed all the problems you remember from your Active Duty time way back in 2005. In fact, all of the crazymakers and threats to patient safety were miraculously fixed on 1 July 2005, the day after you resigned your commission and walked away from what could have been your military career. Too bad, so sad that you missed the paradise present-day military docs enjoy. So shut up about the past and move on.

11) Our troops are the best. They risk their lives on a daily basis. Anyone who speaks out to say that the military medical care being given to them and their dependents is beyond third class now and getting worse every day is an unpatriotic loser who should be shot. There is no way to fix any governmental system ever. The only solution is for everyone to Shut Up and Suck It Up, just like I did when I was an enlisted infantryman during Desert Storm who had no idea about the heartrending medical care duties and responsibilities attending physicians feel toward their vulnerable and deserving patients in a system which is designed to prevent quality care.

May the coming new year find the arguments above rarer on this board.
So mote it be.

--
Rob

 

[Elmer dee]

I came looking only for a discussion, and some education. All I got was excuses and fragile egos.
Because I do not believe any of you are capable of a constructive thought I see no reason to continue in this. Feel free to get the last word in, I won’t even come back and read them.

 

[USAFdoc]

I came looking only for a discussion, and some education. All I got was excuses and fragile egos.
Because I do not believe any of you are capable of a constructive thought I see no reason to continue in this. Feel free to get the last word in, I won't even come back and read them.

please elmer; its one thing for you to be wrong. It is another to be a lier.

go back and read your own entries and teenage insults you tossed my way and then see how that goes with your assessment that "you were only looking for discussion". SAD

you only thing you have said on this site that has been worth 2 cents is "there is no reason to continue in this." You are 100% correct. There is no sense in you wasting your time and our time with your off-the-mark assessments and petty attempts at slamming people.

and if you truly beleived in what you said, you would find evidence for it, and fight for it. Instead you are doing what I saw too many colonels do; look the other way.

ADIOS ELMER.

[/I]

 

[resxn]

G293,

I did finally get my new staff NCOIC to be directly under me and I write his EPR's now. The great thing is that he at least is not fresh out of school and has worked at 5-6 bases in ENT so he is also very well-trained in my specialty. I finally can look forward to having help rather than having to retrain and motivate and continually ask again and again for things. He's a real go-getter it seems. Hopefully that will continue beyond this honeymoon period.

Additionally, to Elmer if he ever reads this thread again, I'm at least glad that you took some pride in learning from your docs. Obviously, I really appreciate it given the excitement I have about my new NCOIC. The problem occurs when the enlisted staff don't care. There is really no effective recourse for a doc who has an inattentive staff. I'm sure your docs appreciated your efforts as I do those who are actively trying to improve themselves and our patient care. I just find it ridiculously difficult to get anything out of those who don't want to do anything and I simply cannot fire them as I would in private practice. That's my frustration.

 

[basicscikills]

This is all purely philisophical for me by the way. I am not even in med. school yet. I use this site for info. that is hard to find elsewhere, and every once in a while try to digest some of these larger issues. I don't want anyone thinking I know what I am talking about. With that said, wouldn't a national health care system that at least took care of the lowest rungs on the ladder (not full blown socialized medicine) take care of this. If you did get paid to provide service to someone who would otherwise not be willing to pay you, doesn't that alleviate the situation?

I live in Tennessee, which instituted a system like the one you are suggesting a few years ago...it was called Tenncare and was basically a lot like the plan proposed by the Clintons during their first eight years in office. The idea was that TNcare was going to be a safety net system for the poor and uninsured.

What actually happened was that Tennessee's budget was rapidly destroyed by the exponentially increasing costs of the program after only a few years. We became the state with the most prescriptions per person in the nation. Patients came to expect such "medical essentials" as free cab rides to and from the hospital. Fraud was rampant. Dead people were on the rolls and somehow having medical care paid for by the taxpayer.

The biggest problem, however, was the fact that many people got on the program that were perfectly able to obtain health care through their job simply because they qualified under the income limit for the government program. And why wouldn't they? The drug benefit and numbers of visits were unlimited. The plan was much better than what working people got through work.

When the governor finally took action, many people who needed the insurance to keep them alive were thrown off the program, while every child in the state got to stay on. Attempts to reform the program failed because of numerous lawsuits by "patient advocates". Now public access hospitals in the state have been deprived of the funding they used to get, but the patients thrown off of the plan still come in, but now to the ED.

In other words, the system was a complete disaster. Anyone who advocates a national health care system should study the Tenncare fiasco closely, then evaluate their position accordingly.

 

[AFRadDoc]

MedicalCorpse,

Thank you for all of your work post active duty to expose the disaster called military medicine. I truly believe the only way to force change on the military is to deprive them of entry level doctors. The old timers such as myself are expendable, but the Air Force would be in serious trouble if they had no source of new docs.

When I get out of this hell (i.e. the day my service commitment is done at 16 years of service), I and a few of my military doc collegues plan on traveling to college campuses and medical schools to give seminars on military 'medicine'. We've even thought about taking out a full-page add in the New York Times warning medical students!

The military is already having problems filling their HPSP slots. If we can drive down those numbers significantly, the military would either have to get out of medicine all together or maybe rethink the way they do business. Then again, it might be wishful thinking.

Like you, I've got plenty of horror stories to tell about military medicine - all of which could have been avoided if practicing doctors had control of the hospitals and clinics (what a concept!!).

Again, thanks for your work!

 

[BomberDoc]

We've even thought about taking out a full-page add in the New York Times warning medical students!

If everybody who felt the same way pitched in a few bucks, this could be a reality in very short order. Perhaps place the ad after the fall administration of the MCAT or when AMCAS applications are due... It could be a very powerful statement. It would have to be placed by an individual who is no longer active duty and not subject to IRR.

 

[Galo]

AFRadDoc,

If you guys are doing lectures, please consider me as one of the speakers. As it seems you have read this forum well, you know I have plenty of stories and warnings to tell.

Thanks

[email protected]