I was once a factory-farmed physician. Then I escaped.

Six years ago I left my job and invited my community to design an ideal medical clinic. Thousands of physicians nationwide have created similar ideal, patient-centered practices.

Would we ever go back? Nope. Never. But from what did we actually escape? I hosted an “antonym contest” among hundreds of free-range physicians to find out.

What’s the reverse of patient-centered care? What’s the opposite of an ideal clinic? Here’s what docs who got away report they’ll never try again:

• Cattle Car Clinic
• Doc-in-a-Box
• Meat Market Medicine
• McHealthcare
• Jiffy Lube
• Premature Consultation
• Primarily Don’t Care Provider
• Read more & click here for winner!

I celebrate my innovative colleagues who are demonstrating daily that it is possible to care for patients–and ourselves.

In honor of International Women’s Day I celebrate the perseverance of one female physician.

“In 1965 my mother, Judith Wible, received her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Of 160 graduates, eight were female.

The dean and fellow classmates reminded the “girls” in the class that they were “taking a man’s seat” and they’d never use their degrees. Even the anatomy professor refused to accept female anatomy and persisted in addressing the women as men. Despite her protests, my mother remained “Mr. Wible.”

Women were excluded from urology—from palpating penises and prostates—while men dominated obstetrics and gynecology. Daily the women were exposed to filthy jokes that demeaned female patients, and in the evenings they slept in cramped nursing quarters while the guys had fraternities complete with maids, cooks, parties, and last year’s exams.”

Thanks mom!

We’ve come a long way . . .

Pamela Wible MD

(excerpt from Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change)

I often wonder: Why am I a doctor?

Maybe I want to live in the real world, a world without pretense, a world where people can’t hide behind money or status. Illness exposes our authentici­ty. And doctoring satiates my need to be witnessed and to witness the raw, uncensored human experience­. I crave intensity. It’s an addiction.

Like an emotional bungee jumper, I live to inhale the last words of a dying man, the first cry of a newborn baby, to feel the slippery soft skin in my hands, to cut the cord and watch a drop of blood fall on my shoe. And to wipe a new mother’s tears, to introduce a father to his son, to hold a daughter’s hand as she kisses her father goodbye one last time.

I’m a doctor because I refuse to be numb. I want to live on the precipice of the underworld­, the afterworld­, to look into patients’ eyes, to free-fall into an abyss of love, despair, death … and then wake up and do it all again tomorrow.

Maybe doctoring fills a hole, a void. I doctor for connection­, to be needed ~ to be loved.

Is ideal medical care defined by experts, politicians, or physicians? None of the above.

I was trained in family & community medicine to care not only for the physical health of an individual but the social, emotional, spiritual, and cultural well-being of the patient, family ~ and community. Impossible in a ten-minute visit. Health care feels like a competitive sport. Who can see the most patients. Who has the biggest, fanciest hospitals. At 36, I quit medicine.

Then came my epiphany: Put patients in charge.

I thought, “Why wait for legislation, another election? I’m a board-certified physician. What’s stopping me from serving the public?

So I held a town hall meeting and invited ordinary citizens to do the extraordinary ~ create the clinic of their dreams. Celebrated since 2005, our pioneering model has sparked a populist movement that has inspired Americans to create ideal clinics and hospitals nationwide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQEx_xcWrEg