Before conducting this research I hypothesized that physicians’ experiences could help improve health policy and health law. My hypothesis was based on the fact that physicians have first-hand experience with what is going on in the healthcare system and are the ones that have to carry out health laws and policies. So, by listening to the experiences of physicians, policymakers could gain insight on what is working, not working and what needs to be improved within the healthcare system. The question that this study focused on was what is the hospitalist experience with New York’s Family Health Care Decisions Act (2010) at the University of Rochester Medical Center? In regard to this Act I wanted to see how using hospitalists’ experiences could be used to improve the Act. The broader intent of this study was to discover how the experiences of physicians in particular can be used to influence health policy in general, and specifically, whether physician’s experiences should and (or) can be used to …show more content…
This begs the question of whether laws should contain such terms if there is not widespread agreement on what it means between physicians. The results also suggest that there is confusion about the difference between surrogates, health care agents and the term proxy. All participants referred to the health care agent as the “proxy” and many used the terms surrogate and proxy interchangeably. In regard to whether physicians’ experiences should and (or) can be used to evaluate the law and amend the law, I found that physicians have a lot of insightful comments in determining what is lacking in the law, what can stay the same and what problems they face within the healthcare