For starters, lack of RESPECT for ALL workers in the healthcare system. That goes right down to secretarial and janitorial staff. Oftentimes, physicians show this lack of respect, or hosptial management does not honor thhis respect.

I could speak forever on the problems facing our health care system today. Newt Gingrich gives lots of food for thought in his book, "Saving Lives, Saving Money." We need to make our health care system a SYSTEM. Understanding that it's commodity is people, not papers. People who have needs 24/7 (INCLUDING THE WORKERS!). None-the-less, healthcare has become a business and needs to be treated as such, as long as it does NOT lose it's focus on humans.

We need to move our archaic system from the 19950s to the 21st century with EMR, more computeriization, figure out a way to protect patient privacy, while still instituting an EMR, have virtual ICUs, focus on where patient saftety is comopromised (one example might be that in this 21st century, physicians STILL write out paper prescriptions.

Sounds like the Flintstone era to me; no more carving prescritions out of rock these days; after all this is 2007!

teamRN