The Color of Atmosphere

If the medical profession you'd devoted your life to was completely taken over by liability concerns and insurance regulations, would you stay a physician?

The Color of Atmosphere tells one doctor's story and the route of her medical career with warmth, humor, and above all, honesty. As wefollow Maggie Kozel from her idealistic days as a devoted young pediatrician, through her Navy experience with universal health coverage, and on into the world of private practice, we see not only her reverence for medical science, and her compassion for her patients,but also the widening gap between what she was trained to do and what is eventually expected of her.

Her personal story plays out against the backdrop of our changing health-care system, and demonstrates the way our method of paying for health care has reached its way into the exam room, putting a stranglehold on how doctors practice, and profoundly influencing the doctor-patient relationship. The stories she shares illustrate the medical, economic, and moral complexities of US health care. To understand Dr. Kozel's ultimate decision to leave medicine is to better comprehend the disconnect between our considerable medical resources and how our health-care system falls short of delivering them.

About the Author:

Maggie Kozel, MD graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1980 and went on to specialize in pediatrics, completing her residency at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. She then servedas a general medical officer on board the USS McKee and as a pediatrician at the US Navy Hospital in Yokuska, Japan. When she returned from Japan, Dr. Kozel worked as a pediatrician in the active reserves at the US Navy Hospital in Bethesda. She also entered private practice first in Washington, DC, and then in Rhode Island. For ten years she was a pediatrician/partner at Narragansett Bay Pediatrics. Dr.Kozel, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, left practice after seventeen years, and is currently teaching high school chemistry in the Providence area. She lives in Jamestown, RI, with her husband anddaughters.