One of the best medical blog writers is ED physician Edwin Leap. With all the talk about emergency room specialist shortages, he implores his specialist-colleagues to step up to the plate:

And here’s one last reality. This is America. It isn’t the Communist block with bizarre borders and border guards. If a patient needs your care, but isn’t from you community, why does it matter? I’d keep them if I could, but I can’t, so help me out! I know you may have financial incentives, or you may be overwhelmed already, but I’m not sending them by the bus-load, only rarely, and one at a time. And only when I can’t do it myself.

Attention Doctors”¦step up to the plate! Let’s be the professionals, heal the sick, treat the wounded, comfort the dying. The money will come, I promise, if we act like the heroes we can be, the heroes we should be. Let’s reclaim medicine! But we can only do it if we take care of those’pesky sick people.’ After all, they need us.