President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Urges Doctors to ‘Think outside the Box’

TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 02, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In these days of protocols and “evidence-based medicine,” skills of independent thinking and judgment are being lost to “cookbook medicine,” writes Erika L. LeBaron, D.O., M.S.N., in the fall issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. LeBaron, current president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), practices family medicine with an osteopathic and integrative approach in Manassas, Va.

Doctors must escape from the various boxes they are trapped in if they are to offer individualized and personalized care to patients, she writes.

Industry-driven guidelines are the first box. Dr. LeBaron notes the catastrophic failure of the top-down COVID protocols and applauds the wise physicians who dared to develop helpful treatments.

The second box is labels. Doctors need to think of older medications that can be repurposed for another use, she states. Off-label prescribing, as of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, was branded as a cardinal sin during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, off-label prescribing has been a long-standing part of medicine and is an efficient part of researching better treatment. Dr. LeBaron suggests that cancer care in particular could benefit.

Chain pharmacies are another box. Dr. LeBaron advocates forming relationships with independent and compounding pharmacies.

Pharma itself is a box: “a pill for every ill.” Noting that Americans filled 6.4 billion prescriptions in 2020 (about 19 per person), Dr. LeBaron suggests considering other treatment modalities, as well as ways to escape the box of “sickness care” by optimizing nutritional and hormone status.

She concludes: “As independent physicians, we must uphold our Oath of Hippocrates and do what is best for the patient. To do this, we must listen to our patients, empathize with their needs, and think outside the box to provide the best personalized and individualized care for each of them. One-size-fits-all medicine just doesn’t truly fit.”

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.

Contact: Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com

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