The Trouble with Medicine

Abstract

This is the autobiographical journey of a female anesthesiologist in the American healthcare system where greed and lust for more is controlling everything we do.

Are you tired, frustrated, and angry with the healthcare industry? Do you feel like you aren't getting the care you need even though you have health insurance? You are not alone. The Trouble with Medicine takes you on the journey of one female physician from growing up in Appalachia to becoming a medical doctor. Dr. Sheryl Walker courageously speaks up for those who feel like they can't or fear retribution if they do, as she shares her journey from medical education and residency training to working life thereafter. She describes gender discrimination, socioeconomic discrimination, specialty discrimination, and sexual harassment in the medical profession as well as the painful anatomy of a lawsuit in this deeply personal autobiographical account of what humans, and especially women, have had to endure during this process.

Dr. Walker describes the disparities in healthcare as experienced by her family in an underserved area of America, as well as the disparities in patient care that she observed over nearly 50 years as a professional healthcare provider. She also delves into how the medical profession became the medical industrial complex, how many doctors have become slaves to bureaucracy, how healthcare dollars are going into personal wealth, and how doctors and hospitals in the early to mid-century shoulder at least some of the responsibility for it. The lingering question remains; can this be fixed? The Trouble with Medicine looks at the questions that must be answered, the complexities involved, and how all of us have a role in fixing the American healthcare system.

REVIEWS and WORDS OF PRAISE

The Trouble With Medicine begins with Dr. Walker’s very personal stories of trials, biases and abuse in our medical system—from student to intern to practicing physician—and with the courage and fortitude to triumph over those tribulations; then expands to expose the fallacies of a system gone awry, a system that has morphed from healthcare into a massive financial machine dominated by pharmaceutical and insurance companies. This is an important book on how, where, and why American medicine is in trouble.
--John Del Vecchio, editor

About the Author

Sheryl Walker, MD is a board certified actively practicing anesthesiologist educated and trained at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), NYU, Harvard, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and The University of Pittsburgh. She has been delivering anesthesia care for nearly 50 years, beginning as a CAA (Certified Anesthesiologist's Assistant) after undergraduate training at CWRU. She has had experience in over 30 different medical institutions in seven different states where she trained or held licensure. Additionally, she served as Medical Director, Chief of Anesthesia, Director of Quality Management, Accreditation Surveyor, Accreditation Surveyor Trainer, Accreditation Committee Member, Medical Director of ACLS training, PALS, CPR, and ACLS instructor, and as a national physician advisor for Executive Health Resources, resulting in exposure to more than 60 additional medical institutions. These experiences became the catalyst for her championing the dignity, rights, respect and safety of patients, colleagues, and nursing staff in an environment that is now fueled by greed and lust for more.