This Week @ U.S. News
Highlights from the magazine and USNews.com
January 24, 2005
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COVER STOIES: The new healers
Chat with your own doctor--on the off chance she has time for a conversation--and she is likely to voice more than a few frustrations. The rewards of practicing medicine--including satisfying relationships with patients, autonomy, high status, and comparatively high pay--are increasingly outweighed by the reality of a 21st-century U.S. medical practice. In their place, writes Katherine Hobson: "reams of time-consuming paperwork that is out of proportion to time spent caring for patients, declining reimbursements from insurers, a loss of autonomy from managed care, and fear of malpractice lawsuits." This week's edition of U.S. News takes a look at the new medical landscape.
Doctors vanish from view
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a2--The next generation
Rachel K. Sobel pens the latest installment of her letters from medical school. "If I had wanted to make a lot of money, I would have gone straight into investment banking. If I were enamored solely of science, then I would have chosen a biology Ph.D. But I decided to apply to medical school. I felt a calling, a desire to be engaged in the special healing bond between a doctor and a patient." But, she writes, this year, her third in medical school, "has brought a loss of some innocence."
Letter from medical school
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a6--Medicine's turf war
Nonphysician clinicians--nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, dentists, optometrists, chiropractors, and others--have become prominent health providers. "Often working alongside doctors, well-trained, nonphysician clinicians provide frontline medical care to patients increasingly needing preventive care or monitoring for diabetes, congestive heart failure, and other chronic diseases," writes Christopher J. Gearon. "These new faces of American medicine are more willing to go to rural or inner-city areas and to work beyond the limited office hours typically kept by physicians."
Specialists without M.D.'s are pushing for more medical power
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a14--Nurses step forward
"Many of the country's more than 2 million nurses are taking on jobs that were once the purview of physicians, like administering chemotherapy and running their own primary-care practices," write Samantha Levine and Angie C. Marek. "They are carving new niches in fields such as genetics and computerized patient records, where nurses were once hard to find, and bringing philosophies oriented toward health promotion and problem prevention to geriatric care and case management."
Nurses are taking on bigger roles
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a5--Teaming up
"Through necessity and opportunity, medicine has become a huge group effort," writes Bernadine Healy, M.D.. "The titans of yesterday fought hard for their autonomy and happily polished their individual pedestals of near godliness. Yet, the wisest of them set the stage for their own toppling by embracing the endless frontier of medical science, which ultimately transformed the way we give care. But, solo or group, yesterday or today, on the frontier or in the midst of today's fast-paced clinic, the practice of medicine by all its participants has never been easy... it demands a piece of one's soul."
The teamwork that is essential in the medical field
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a8------------------------------
NATION & WORLD
--The inauguration
"It was a day for the true believers--the social conservatives, Christian activists, foreign-policy hawks, and, of course, George W. Bush himself," writes Kenneth T. Walsh. "After taking the oath of office for his second term Thursday, Bush delivered a 21-minute inaugural address that was as big and blustery as the winter winds that swirled around him on the West Front of the Capitol."
A clarion call to end tyranny and spread freedom worldwide
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a13--Democracy under the gun
"There's a lot to overcome before the Iraqi eletions," writes Ilana Ozernoy. "More than eight electoral workers have been killed and hundreds threatened with death, including the top electoral official in Mosul who resigned after his family was threatened. Political assassinations and the threat of car bombs at public gatherings have largely precluded holding political rallies."
Preparing to vote, Iraqis wonder if elections will lead to peace or civil war
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a15--The Shiite factor
"No players may be more important to the outcome of the political struggles in Iraq than the Shiite Muslims of the Middle East," writes Jay Tolson. "Directly at issue in Iraq is not only the question of whether the nation's Shiite Muslim majority, some 60 percent of the population, will acquire political influence commensurate with its numbers for the first time in modern Iraqi history."
Long vilified as extremists, these Muslims may hold the key to a new Middle East
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a9--Just a phone call away
Kevin Whitelaw reports on the Rewards for Justice program, run by the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which offers up to $25 million for tips that lead to the capture--or death--of some of the nation's most wanted terrorists. "While the program has been around for two decades, it is a growing part of the U.S. counterterrorism apparatus and has been expanded to include 'high value' Iraqi targets, such as Baathist official Muhammad Zimam al-Razzaq al-Sadun. A tipster who provided his whereabouts was paid $1 million."
U.S. officials pay out millions to tipsters for help finding terrorists
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a10--Ambitious crusader
Terence Samuel proviles Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota. "He's close to the president. He's on trips to Southeast Asia with the majority leader, and last month, after only two years in the Senate, he made a nearly successful bid to chair the GOP Senate campaign committee in the new Congress, losing by a single vote. But it is his dogged pursuit of alleged corruption in the United Nations' former oil-for-food program in Iraq that has propelled Coleman into the public consciousness as Washington's chief tormentor of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan."
Portrait: Norm Coleman
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a4------------------------------
COLUMNISTS
--Revolutionary president
The National Interest by Michael Barone:
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a3--The validation of the vote
Commentary by Fouad Ajami:
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a12--No more border games
The Dobbs Report by Lou Dobbs:
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a7--A "cure" worse than the cold
Editorial by Mortimer B. Zuckerman:
http://www.you-click.net/GoNow/a15504a121664a272335445a11