According to George Ritzer, bureaucracy completely dehumanized the social institutions in America. He sees the bureaucracy as having four components: efficiency, predictability, control and quantification. He terms this dehumanization of an institution as "McDonaldization". One of the most prevalent examples in modern society is the health care institution. In the past, health care was more simplistic in nature. House calls were not unheard of, and doctors knew all of their patients and their families on a personal level. The doctor who delivered your parents would deliver you as well as your future children. Follow-ups were quite normal; doctors were concerned with your progress for their own peace of mind. It is only recently that the …show more content…

If prescriptions are required, you go to the pharmacy, get the prescription filled, and get the privilege of listening to the same warnings about finishing all of the prescriptions, side-affects, the dangers of interacting drugs and alcohol that you have heard many times before, all stickered on the side of the prescription bottle. The heath care system has become predictable, but at the cost of a feeling of individual care. The fourth component of McDonaldization, that of control, is one of the most important to the health care system. The doctors and nurses that make up the health care system have absolute control over our health and our physical well being. Although doctors don't have the kind of power and responsibility that they possessed a century ago, their influence is still quite vast. Just by having you to sit in a waiting room and wait for another person, in this case the doctor or nurse, they are exhibiting control over you. Doctors are able to administer their ultimate control in places like the emergency room. Doctors determine which patient is in more urgent need of care than another. By making this type of decision, doctors effectively choose who has the best care, and in many cases, it could mean the difference between life and death. Doctors also exhibit their control with organ transplants. Doctors evaluate each case carefully very carefully. Once donor is found a doctor may attempt to influence the patient's family that harvesting the