The share of doctors who belong to unions is rising quickly at a time when organized labor is losing ground with other professions. The Conversation U.S. asked Patrick Aguilar, a Washington University in St. Louis pulmonologist and management professor, to explain why the number of physicians joining unions is growing – a trend that appears likely to continue.

How Long Have There Been Health Care Unions?

U.S. nurses first joined labor unions in 1896. Today, about 1 in 5 registered nurses are union members, twice the rate of unionization in all professions.

The first physicians’ union formed in 1934, when hospital residents – doctors in training who tended then, as now, to be paid relatively little and forced to work long hours – organized to demand higher pay and shorter shifts. For the

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