Author: Randi Sokol

Patients generally come to the doctor’s office expecting that their doctor will do stuff. And, doctors often feel a sense of satisfaction the more they can do for their patients. Psychologically, it makes sense: as doctors, we feel a sense of purpose by providing, measuring, injecting, prescribing, cutting, and ordering. We want to help set our patients down a healthier pathway, which often requires change in their current status; naturally, we respond to this call to duty to promote change by doing, doing, doing. But is all this doing really necessary?

As a medical student and now family physician resident at UC Davis, I’ve attended numerous medical conferences over the past several years, and the same theme keeps coming up over and over again: “We need to find a way to market and sell Primary Care!” “We need to make Primary Care sexy!” Much like Grey’s Anatomy has made surgery sexy, I’ve even heard proposals for a Primary Care or Family Medicine-based reality show. There is a critical shortage of primary care doctors that adversely affects underserved populations. Here is what we can do about it.