public policy Archives | The Short Coat

Why do we struggle to change when our world changes around us?

Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum is beloved by its visitors. Styled as an homage to Victorian displays of medical and biological curiosities, its exhibits include human remains with extreme pathologies…and sometimes dubious provenance.

Once such items were joyfully collected by rich men to fill their cabinets of curiosities. But times have changed since the museum opened in 1863. The museum’s leaders have decided to reassess the exhibits’ ethical and moral qualities, despite the anger of devoted fans who like it fine the way it is, thanks.

Dave, M2 Jeff Goddard, and new co-host M1 Fallon Jung discuss our all-too-human resistance to change, as well as a proposal by a consumer group to open access to a ‘secret’ database of state medical boards’ disciplinary actions against physicians, which they hope will prod medical boards to do their jobs better.

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Policy is not sexy. I mean, it’s not saving lives, or curing disease, or making groundbreaking discoveries. But it isn’t a stretch to say that policy is as important as any of these, because politicians are making decisions about health and healthcare that affect millions of patients and their physicians. The laws they come up with determine what you can do for your patients, how you practice medicine, how you get paid, what kinds of care are legal or illegal, and much, much more. Seems like something doctors should pay attention to, perhaps even get directly involved with.

M4 and future surgeon Sarah Eikenberry got a glimpse of the process as the first student to take the Carver College of Medicine’s new advocacy clerkship. Think you know how a bill gets passed? You might be surprised to know that Schoolhouse Rock didn’t tell us the whole story. Her self-assigned project for the clerkship was to get a bill passed in the Iowa state legislature to include the Stop The Bleed campaign in public education in Iowa. That turns out to be a pretty big project! Was she successful? What did she learn? Where do things go often off the rails?

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