Air travel and a better education

I recently saw this interesting parody of the health care industry in the form of a viral video titled "If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care." It was inspired by an article in the National Journal by Jonathan Rauch, which posed the question: what would the airline industry look like if it were run like the health care industry? The video is a good, comprehensive presentation of the administrative failures that are plaguing health care and driving up costs. Check it out.



Related, I found this great post on the NYTimes "Well Blog" discussing the implications of only educating med students on clinical topics while failing to address the social/economic aspects of health care.

An interesting piece of evidence--as cited by the article--was this study conducted by the journal of Academic Medicine that revealed that "the vast majority of students felt they had received adequate clinical training during their four years of schooling. But fewer than half felt they had had adequate exposure to health care systems and practice, an area of study that extends to subjects like medical economics, managed care, practice management and medical record-keeping."

The students that did receive the non-clinical training felt more satisfied with their education and did not believe that the extra courses took away from their clinical preparation. Further, medical education programs that have offered courses in these areas reported that it did not take long to teach students about such concepts (only about 16-17 lectures).

Dr. Pauline Chen, who authored the post, wrote about her education, "It was possible to learn about the economic and social aspects of health care while immersed in the details of biology, physiology and pharmacology...it was impossible to become a good clinician without doing so."

I am curious to see whether or not my future training will include such areas of study. Hopefully by then, programs around the country will have adopted a system of educating future physicians on the social/economic issues involved in medicine. Perhaps then will the health care industry begin to look not so frighteningly similar to the video above.