As a physician, now principally a writer, I remain concerned about the death of the physician’s written record.
“Nevertheless, the process of note-writing (what many more accurately call “charting” or “documentation”) still has a point. I would even argue that the process is the point — because it forces me to slow down, reflect, and make meaning of the events and conversations that take place in the exam room, and the relationships I build there. Until very recently, every doctor, like it or not, had to do this work: the work of a writer.”
I am not alone nor a Luddite in my alarm over the encroachment of the digiterati and AI into my former life. From STAT, Every doctor is a writer: On the end of note-writing and meaning-making in medicine
While there is little doubt that the pandemic resulted in worsening test scores for school-age children, John Haidt suggests that the decline began before the virus and shutdowns and is attributable to not just phones but the screens of laptops and other technologies that we eagerly bought into several years earlier.
“The book [as UNESCO report, An Ed-Tech Tragedy] details what happened to learners, teachers, families, communities—and understandings of education itself—when schools closed and formal learning shifted almost exclusively to digital screens. It is a critically important period to study. As the book explains, COVID-19 created a world-spanning record of the impacts of screen-dependent learning. And this record, recounted over 500 pages and with references to over 1,500 sources, leaves no doubt about its many harms. The word ‘tragedy’ appears in the title for a reason.”
After Babel posted a summary, An Ed-Tech Tragedy, I can’t help but wonder whether the electronic health record and the AI algorithms slated for healthcare will not inflict similar damage.
The US Postal Service was required to deliver mail everywhere in the US at a time when mail was the medium of choice; it was how families learned that their loved ones died in the Civil War. But times have changed.
“...what you have just read is an accurate portrayal of the United States Postal Service, which lost $9.5 billion shuffling paper around the country in fiscal year 2024, while Americans sent one another six billion text messages daily. Half the people surveyed in 2021 hadn’t received a personal letter in five years; 14 percent had never received one.
And yes, 58 percent of the letters people do get is “marketing mail”—ads, catalogs, credit card offers—which the USPS handles for the private sector at a discount rate, even though the recipient’s mailbox is usually just a brief stop en route to the recycling bin.”
What should we do to at least break even? From the Free Press, Is It Time to Privatize the USPS?
And a contrary view, also from the Free Press.
“That matters, especially in rural communities like my parents’, for whom the USPS is the only real option for sending and receiving mail. Consider Aniak, population 488, a remote village in western Alaska that was profiled by Business Insider in 2020. Accessible only by boat or plane, it is absolutely unprofitable for the USPS to deliver anything to Aniak—and yet, the USPS does deliver, offering the town its only material link to the outside world. Through the postal service, the residents of Aniak get their kids’ school supplies, their groceries, and their lifesaving prescription medications. A USPS operating on market principles would not adequately serve these Americans—and as a result, they wouldn’t have access to medicine the average citizen can buy at their local CVS.
The government is not a business, even if it is currently run by two businessmen, and the lives of rural Americans should not be sacrificed on the altar of market ideology.
Is there something the government could actually do to help here?”
Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
Director of Medicine
Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.
