Doctors Council is comprised of physicians and dentists from diverse backgrounds and specialties, practicing in multiple settings. As frontline doctors, we are united to ensure that our voice, and the voices of the patients and communities we serve, are heard.And we use that voice to advance our mission, realize our values, and shape our healthcare system for the better.
In our practice settings, we strive to improve care through the quality improvement work we do, improve the experience of our patients and their loved ones, and be responsible stewards for healthcare resources. We collaborate with all the members of the care team towards establishing a truly just culture based on mutual respect. We work to empower our colleagues, and develop leadership that sustains doctor engagement resulting in a true two-way conversation with our institutions.
In our Hospitals and Health Systems, we use our voice to address traditional employment issues like salary and benefits, due process and performance evaluations. We advocate to gauge group and individuals performance with metrics that that doctors have a real say in designing. We seek to be heard on important matters in our institutions like budgeting priorities, adoption of technologies and tools that work for doctors, and protecting services that meet our communities’ needs.
In the councils of government and within the broader society, we add our voice to all those who call for a safer, cost-effective, high quality healthcare system that is responsive to the physical and mental health needs of the communities we serve—and adequate funding to make that system safe, cost-effective and high quality. We believe in speaking to the dire need to see healthcare embedded in a social system that is increasingly unequal, where social determinants, unaddressed, significantly limit our effectiveness to secure the health of the patients and families we encounter daily, causing unnecessary anxiety, pain and suffering.
Finally, we come together to talk each other: across specialties and departments, practice settings and geographies, as we weave our conversations into a community that helps sustain us. We learn from each other, support each other, and listen to each other’s stories. And the common themes in each unique story told by each individual voice, reminds us all of why we are doctors: to compassionately care for all our patients, considering the whole of what makes for wellness and a healthy person, to the utmost of our abilities, regardless of their station or lot in life.