OT: Doctors & Especially Military Doctors

[Guest guest]

Howdy Dee,

 

> Growing up my ped always knew me - created conversation and really

> cared about all of his patients.

 

Same here .. my pediatrician (Dr. Overall) was also my mother's

pediatrician when she was a child. Like the ministers back then, he often

had Sunday dinner with us and other patients.. But those are the good old

days and they are long gone.

 

> Now as an adult I have to use a military doctor, which i hate... but there

are still lots of

> doctors out there.

 

My experience with military doctors was just the opposite .. I found them to

be fantastic and caring people. I used them for 30 years while on active

duty .. also my family used them .. and I used them for 6 more years after

retirement because I was in an isolated area and had government

sponsorship. As a civilian now I miss the level of care and concern I had

then. While on active duty there was one occasion where the U.S. Army

brought in a thoracic specialist/surgeon from Walter Reed in D.C. to William

Beaumont at Ft. Bliss to deal with my wife .. she had a particular lung

problem that was rare outside the Middle East .. they did this because I was

working daily and we had young children so traveling to D.C. was not a good

option. On another occasion they brought in an internal medicine specialist

on African diseases to treat me while I was assigned to USA CENTCOM at Ft.

McPherson, GA. All treatment me and mine received during my career was no

less than outstanding.

 

However .. I retired from active duty on 1 January 1989 .. and just as the

treatment you and I received from our pediatricians when we were youngsters

is probably different than that our children receive today .. I believe that

the treatment you receive in military hospitals today is probably a

different quality than what I experienced .. because:

 

(1) There was a time that the pay of military doctors was fairly close to

that of their civilian counterparts .. that is not the case now. If you

read Army Times (which does NOT stroke the DOD .. in fact, they have a

lawsuit against DOD today) you will read about hospital commanders

complaining about dealing with 200% more patients with 50% of the medical

staff they had in the past. The short term fix has been (to a less than

desirable degree) contracting American and foreign civilian doctors. The

foreign doctors are often great but not always .. and I would guess that

some of the American doctors who take such contracts have nothing better to

do.

 

(2) There was a noticeable difference in the treatment my family received

during the Vietnam War because there was a shortage of military doctors in

the Continental United States. Logic and budgetary constraints preclude,

during peacetime, the military from manning for wartime .. and peacetime

level manpower is stressed, at best, during wartime. Aside from duties on

the battlefield, there are only so many hours a doctor can work overtime

before they become prone to making errors and because of this, family

members don't get the priority during those periods. Doctors working in the

field hospitals work crazy hours and they are amazing folks .. I have seen

civilian Doctors Without Borders do the same thing during emergencies and I

have concluded that there are many dedicated military and civilian medical

folks out there who operate above and beyond the normal call of duty.

 

(3) You are now experiencing problems due to the conditions related above

... I was fortunate enough to not have the same experiences you are having.

 

 

> They are out there-

Right you are .. Jennifer said that well. And as Marcia wrote, in most

cases today medicine is a corporate business rather than an individual

calling and many doctors must get permission from some non-medical types to

perform procedures they know are necessary. Military hospitals have

similar problems .. the medical doctors are not commanded by ranking doctors

but by Hospital Commanders who are ranking members of the Medical Service

Corps .. these folks should be viewed in the same light we view a corporate

CEO .. except that a corporate CEO has more flexibility in making command

decisions than do the military hospital commanders. The corporate CEO is

not second guessed and his performance is evaluated based a profit-loss

statement .. the military hospital commander is performing a juggling act

while receiving guidance from above that is dictated by the budget Congress

has approved for military medical care.

 

I am sure that based on bad experiences, there will be some folks who

disagree with me .. but I know for a fact that the the military .. if left

to its own devices and when not hamstrung by over supervision and extremely

tight (and insufficient) budgets .. will take care of its own .. and in our

All Volunteer Armed Forces, military family members are considered to be a

part of the military's own. Are there any exceptions to this? Of course

there are .. people are people and sometimes a person squeezes through the

system and exceeds the Peter Principle without detection .. for a while.

But when those people are identified they usually lose whatever investment

they had in their careers .. its not just revoking a license in one state

and allowing them to practice in another. I worked for dozens of combat

arms and combat support general officers during my career and all were

outstanding people who I greatly admired and trusted.. except for two each 2

star generals who obviously did a lot of things right to get to where they

were but after getting there they became a part of the problem rather than a

part of the solution .. both were found out and sent into retirement.

 

Folks are folks and military people are folks .. last night I watched the

Hollywood version of the TRUE story of Senior Chief Carl Brashear, who

accomplished FOUR admirable FIRSTS while serving in the U.S. Navy .. he was

the first Black American U.S. Navy Diver to graduate from the Navy Diving &

Salvage School, the first ever amputee to fight for and win the right to

continue his military service .. and continue to serve as a Navy Diver ..

and later, with one leg amputated, he was the first Black American .. and

the first ever amputee .. to become a Master Navy Diver. Is such

performance a norm for folks .. or military folks? No! But it is one

example of a helluva lotta military folks who were out there before and are

still out there now who routinely operate at a level of performance that is

far above and beyond the call of duty. This obviously would also include a

good number of military doctors. Carl Brashear ..

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203019/plotsummary

 

Wishing you better luck in the future .. and y'all keep smiling. :-)

 

Butch .. http://www.AV-AT.com