Early in my career an elderly woman presented to establish care. When I discovered she was suffering from a urinary tract infection, I reviewed all her treatment options from natural remedies to antibiotics. When I stopped talking, she looked straight at me and said, “What’s the matter, Honey? Don’t you know what you are doing?”

The truth is I do not always know what I am doing. In that case I did, but I realized that patients back in the day preferred a patriarchal, just-take-this-pill approach to medicine. Today patients want to discuss their options.

Now, I believe, people want a real doctor.

What’s YOUR fantasy? More and more doctors are putting patients in charge of designing their ideal health-care experience. Share your wildest dreams and I’ll do my best to bring them to life. Promise!

While ideal clinics are opening all across America, some doctors accuse me of practicing “Alice-in-Wonderland” medicine.  When ridiculed, I often wonder: Why?

After all, who could be against ideal health care?

Even the Journal of Family Practice praises our innovative community-focused model. And now our clinic is featured in the newest edition of Harvard School of Public Health’s Renegotiating Health Care, a text that examines major trends with the potential to change the dynamics of health care. Yet some journals reject ideal care. Why? One editor responds” It’s “too utopian.” Uh. . . really?

Robert F. Kennedy acknowledged: “One-fiftth of all people are against everything all of the time.”

I think that means four out of five Americans are ready for utopian health care.  Are you?

I’ve been writing prescriptions for twenty years. Early in my career I realized what patients often need can’t be delivered by Pfizer or Merck. Here are some of the best prescriptions I’ve ever written:

• Have sex every day!
• Quit your job!
• Take a one-week vacation at the coast.
• Go on a seven-day silent retreat in the woods.
• Find a girlfriend.
• Reconnect with deceased relatives.
• Experience a month-long media fast.
• Fall in love with yourself.
• Drink kale smoothies (recipe provided).
• Practice twice-daily meditation.
• Speak your truth.
• Get a puppy.
• Publish a book.
• Come with me to a writer’s conference. I’ll pay.
• Get divorced!
• See an energy healer. I’ll go with you.
• Sell your car & commute by bike.
• Start a spring garden (seeds provided).
• Avoid your mother-in-law.

. . . and more!

I get a call this week from Maria, a “frustrated and disgusted” ob/gyn in Pennsylvania. I ask her how she found me. She says she dug out my article, one she’d been carrying around since 2007. After fifteen years in three employed hospital positions, she’s finally ready to quit assembly-line medicine.

Maria’s not alone. Studies confirm an epidemic of frustrated physicians. Can grumpy doctors provide health care? Are bad jobs bad for our health? Turns out a bad job can be worse than no job at all.

I’ve cured anxiety, panic attacks, depression, fibromyalgia, high blood pressure, and fatigue all with the same prescription: Quit your job.

Case in point: Amanda complains of a rapid heart rate. Hooked up to a 24-hour portable monitor, she demonstrates tachycardia at rest–only at work! At home she’s fine. So, of course, she fills my prescription.

Is it really my job to tell people to quit their jobs? Yes. Especially doctors. We’re role models for patients. Being healthy is our duty.

And babies deserve to be welcomed into the world by the happy hearts and smiley faces of people who love their jobs.