Doc Worker
“He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window as he drove by the dusty ranches and dry lakebeds of West Texas. He’d started smoking to cope with the stress of medical school, but now he’d been practicing rural family medicine for 41 years as the stresses continued to mount. He was the only working doctor left to care for three remote counties east of El Paso, an area similar in size to the entire state of Maryland.” WaPo’s excellent Eli Saslow on the dramatic shortage of rural doctors (and why the pressing problem could get even worse). ‘Out here, it’s just me’: In the medical desert of rural America, one doctor for 11,000 square miles.