"If there is a physician on the plane, please press your call light!" The vast majority of doctors who have flown on airplanes have heard this, and most of us are willing, if not entirely eager, to respond. What follows is usually a far from ideal encounter with inadequate information, too much noise, a cramped space to work in and little knowledge of what is expected or even possible. My experiences (I think there have been 3) were people who had become dizzy or had passed out. One of them was pretty frail, but none required that we land before our destination airport. What I learned was that: 1. More than one physician usually responds to these calls. As a general internist, I'm usually the most appropriate person to evaluate the patient (winning out over ophthalmologists, dermatologists and obstetricians.) 2. The flight attendants are very grateful, bring me an extra glass of juice and promise some kind of compensation from the airline which may or may not ma...
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.