4 Hospitals, Heal Yourselves Teaching hospitals are beset by a litany of now familiar complaints. They are often described as large and impersonal. Their expert clinician-professors are said to be aloof and uncaring. House staff rotate off services just when patients are beginning to feel comfortable with them.
Personnel often disregard patients' dignity.
Appointments are difficult to arrange, their locations are increasingly difficult to find, and the waiting time to see doctors is often excessive. Nevertheless, there is a general assumption that the teaching hospitals provide better care than nonteaching hospitals. They have a greater concentration of clinical expertise, a focus on clinical research, and technological superiority. Yet nonteaching hospitals have changed considerably over the past several decades. Thus, even without extensive data, one would guess that any differences in the quality of care between teaching and nonteaching hospitals would be rather small and difficult to quantify.