The pandemic points to an important lesson: a rejection of traditional leadership structures, at least those that feed into a profit-based medical system, may be necessary in order to create a different world. The union provides such a framework, vesting power in a collective of voices. But in order to succeed at the level of a union, physicians need to let their voices join that collective -- they cannot expect a delegate or representative alone to do the entire job, just as we might expect a program director to guide us in the right direction.
"The horror facing us during this pandemic makes it easy to seek a scapegoat in business administrators, but many housestaff have seen that both their hospitals’ business leaders and clinician-leaders are failing them. Unionization, a necessary step toward righting the labor struggle in medicine, is only a first step."
A PM&R resident physician discusses how #COVID19 has amplified the need for unionization of housestaff in medicine, newly published on in-House, the online peer-reviewed publication for residents & fellows.
https://in-housestaff.org/bosses-of-us-doctors-administrators-and-the-profit-motive-1756
