Another Failing System

It seems America’s public schools aren’t the only system struggling these days. According to an article in The New York Times back in July of this year,

“Some years ago, a psychiatrist named Wendy Dean read an article about a physician who died by suicide. Such deaths were distressingly common, she discovered. The suicide rate among doctors appeared to be even higher that the rate among active military members, a notion that startled Dean, who was then working as an administrator at the U.S. Army medical research center in Maryland. Dean started asking the physicians she knew how they felt about their jobs, and many of them confided that they were struggling. Some complained that they didn’t have enough time to talk to their patients because they were too busy filling out electronic medical records. Others bemoaned having to fight with insurers about whether a person with a serious illness would be preapproved for medication. The doctors Dean surveyed were deeply committed to the medical profession. But many of them were frustrated and unhappy, she sensed, not because they were burned out from working too hard but because the health care system made it so difficult to care for their patients.”

“In July 2018, Dean published an essay with Simon G. Talbot, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, that argued that many physicians were suffering from a condition known as moral injury. Military psychiatrists use the term to describe an emotional wound sustained when, in the course of fulfilling their duties, soldiers witnessed or committed acts – raiding a home, killing a noncombatant – that transgressed their core values. Doctors on the front lines of America’s profit-driven health care system were also susceptible to such wounds, Dean and Talbot submitted, as the demands of administrators, hospital executives and insurers forced them to stray from the ethical principles that were supposed to govern their profession. The pull of these forces left many doctors anguished and distraught, caught between the Hippocratic oath and ‘the realities of making a profit from people at their sickest and most vulnerable.’”

…

“Until the system changes, some doctors are finding ways to opt out. I spoke with several physicians who have started direct-care practices, in which patients pay a modest monthly fee to see doctors who can offer them more personalized out-of-network care, without having to answer to administrators or insurers. Diana Girnita, the rheumatologist who became disillusioned by the astronomical bills her patients kept receiving, started a direct-care practice in her specialty in 2020. One afternoon not long ago, I sat in on a virtual appointment she had with a patient who wished to remain anonymous, a 32-year-old veteran with an athletic build who began to experience severe joint pain several months earlier. He asked his primary-care physician for a referral to see a rheumatologist after a blood test showed a high level of antinuclear antibodies (ANAs), which can be a sign of an autoimmune disorder. He called every doctor’s office he could find within a 100-mile radius of his house, but none could schedule him for months. His wife then stumbled upon Grinita’s name online and called her office, and he got a virtual appointment the next day.”

“The meeting I sat in on was a follow-up appointment. When it began, Girnita relayed some good news, telling him that his ANA level had fallen and that his lab results indicated he did not have an autoimmune disease. The patient was visibly relieved, though he was still experiencing persistent pain in his wrist. Girnita advised him to get an MRI, which she said she could order for $800 – a fraction of the amount that hospitals typically charged. One advantage of the direct-care model was that physicians negotiated with labs and imaging centers for tests and services, Girnita told me, bypassing the corporate middlemen (insurers, pharmacy-benefit managers) that drove up health care costs.”

Does this story sound familiar?

You could substitute teachers for doctors in this story and paint a pretty accurate picture of what is happening to classroom leaders in our current public education system.

Classroom teachers being attacked from all sides.

Teachers torn between taking care of kids and preparing young learners to take high-stakes tests.

A public education system unwilling and unable to change.

Some adult learning leaders breaking away from the traditional system and creating learning pods with families interested in leaving their public schools.

Being able to make kids smarter and stronger, while defining, planning, executing, and evaluating their learning, outside of the traditional public school system.

Like medicine, the time is now for a new system to emerge when it comes to providing a quality learning experience for our kids.

If we don’t do it soon, we will continue to lose young learners and adult learning leaders who struggle mightily in the existing public school system.

Til tomorrow. SVB