By Patrick Aguilar, Managing Director of Health, Washington University in St. Louis

The share of doctors who belong to unions is rising quickly at a time when organized labor is losing ground with other professions.

Patrick Aguilar, a Washington University in St. Louis pulmonologist and management professor, explains in an interview 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

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