Arguably, significant aspects of the behavior of most physicians in practice have changed over the past decade or two. Written rules have all but vanished under a tide of litigation, and value-based unwritten rules have been sorely tested. Behavior that was previously almost inconceivable has become commonplace. Have the values of physicians also changed over those years, or has behavior changed without a corresponding change of values? If values have not changed, and such a significant change is unlikely, the incongruent behavior will almost certainly have added to our stress and dysequilibrium.

Of course, neither you nor I have changed our behavior in practice—others have. So let us speak of others.

We hear it said that medicine has become a business. Presumably it always was a business. The provision of quality care, reflecting the best knowledge available and . . . [Full Text of this Article]