Summer of Work Exposes Medical Students to System’s Ills
By KEVIN SACK- NYTimes.com
Published: September 8, 2009
SEATTLE — This summer, medical students from the University of Washington took a long look under the hood of the health care system they are about to inherit, and many returned to campus last week with their eyes wide open and their idealism tempered.
The students learned not only to deliver babies and suture wounds, but also to order unnecessary tests as protection against lawsuits, to hector specialists into seeing Medicaid patients, to match patients with prescriptions on Wal-Mart’s $4 list. And they saw firsthand what Mr. Olsgaard called “a tidal wave of chronic disease” — diabetes, hypertension, obesity, depression — that left many questioning how much any one physician could really accomplish.
Summer of Work Exposes Medical Students to System’s Ills – NYTimes.com
