The Financial Crisis: Professional Lessons for Physicians

Abstract

The financial crisis of 2008 is considered one of the most serious US economic downturns in the past 100 years, exceeded in severity only by the Great Depression of the 1930s. It included the collapses of a number of large financial institutions, government bailouts of many banks, a large drop in stock prices, and severe losses in the housing markets, associated with high rates of eviction and foreclosure. The wealth of Americans fell by trillions of dollars. People around the world are still laboring in its aftermath. The Levin-Coburn report of the US Congress found that the crisis resulted not from some unpredictable and unavoidable natural disaster but from complex and high-risk financial instruments [1]. This financial crisis illustrates 5 important professional lessons to which physicians and medical organizations need to attend if we are to avoid similar problems in our own ranks.