Why physician strikes are a form of hospice

Why physician strikes are a form of hospice
KevinMD; by Patrick Hudson; 8/24/25
I have only recently started thinking about strikes. They seemed like something other people did: railway workers, bus drivers, teachers, dockworkers. People with contracts. People who clocked in and out. Not doctors. Not surgeons. Certainly not me. You and I were supposed to absorb and adapt. To advocate from within. And we did, for a long time. We bent ourselves into shapes that did not fit. Worked around all the broken processes. Made phone calls after hours. Took the extra shift. Rewrote the notes to satisfy a system that did not understand the work. Until, eventually, some of us stopped. Not because we wanted to burn it all down, but because we could not keep pretending. And that is what a strike is, sometimes. Not rebellion. Not rage. Just a line and a refusal. And an end to the performance. Is it not strange how long you can work inside a system that is eating itself? ... You do not strike because you have stopped caring. You strike because you remember when it mattered.
Publisher's note: An interesting analogy for our fractured healthcare system...