Your doctor’s office: biology matters more than ideology
The author, a family physician, argues that the politicization of medicine is eroding the physician-patient relationship and becoming a public health crisis. The intrusion of partisan ideology into clinical care is having real consequences, including the erosion of trust between doctors and patients.
The physician-patient relationship is being damaged by the intrusion of politics and ideology into the exam room. As a family physician and director of a residency program, the author has seen the effects of this politicization firsthand. Vaccines, dietary guidelines, and mental health care have become tied to party identity and culture-war battlegrounds. The author argues that while health policy is a legitimate topic for democratic debate, the intrusion of partisan ideology into clinical care is a public health crisis. Physicians undergo decades of training and sacrifice to help people, not to deceive or profit from patients. The narrative that doctors are corrupt or conspiring against patients is false and harmful, and is eroding the trust between doctors and patients. The current ideological assault on medicine is exacerbating burnout, moral injury, and physician suicide.
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