A Dance in Anger: Physician Responses to Changes in Practice. (Physician Anger)‪.‬

PHYSICIANS ARE FLIRTING with unions, and words new to health care's lexicon now appear in print: words like fraud, bankruptcy, boycott, and dispute. In more private places, physicians are heard to say, "I'd not advise my son to go into medicine today." Or, "It's not fun anymore. There's no joy to practice." Thomas Marr, MD, writing in The Physician Executive describes the Pinata Syndrome, a physician disorder characterized by anger, griping, sniping, resistance, outrage, melancholy, and other signs of loss. (1) Marr reports that nearly half of the physicians surveyed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune/Harvard Physician Survey believe the Minnesota health care system has become worse in the past year: half think the quality of medicine has declined; and a third believe that health plans are the cause of the decline. Nearly half of the doctors surveyed would not advise a qualified college student to pursue medicine as a career.