The NLRB reasoned that residents are paid salaries, given benefits just like those of any other employee, and in every way conform to the NLRA definition of an employee. These are blunt instruments. Residents tell us they are spending nights transporting patients and drawing blood until they are too exhausted to learn or give safe patient care the next day. This gives residents an incentive to conceal problems. In contrast, the labor laws protect resident-employees who want to work together to improve conditions so they can learn under optimal circumstances.
Medicine now is practiced side by side with multiple other categories of health care workers.
If the profession is to remain preeminent, physicians must learn to function effectively in the team. Organizing can teach these skills. Physicians, however, remain professionals. Eliot Friedson describes as the central principle of professionalism the condition that members of a specialized occupation control their own work. This implies that physicians in training must learn how to insist on working conditions that facilitate the best possible care of patients.