And the benefits aren't just for patients: working in the industry can be highly rewarding too.
Volunteers may be more likely to stick with exercise than patients working out under doctors' orders.
In Uganda a large proportion of HIV/Aids care is delivered by groups of patients working to help their peers understand and manage their condition.
The bridegroom, 41, is a hospitalist, a physician who primarily attends hospitalized patients, working in the department of internal medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.
In fact, the trip to Florida is a big part of her rehab: first, as a much-needed break and second, as the achievement of a "goal" that is crucial to keeping patients working hard.
Since she qualified six years ago, she has been employed as an AP with cancer patients, working some of the time on a ward and some of the time at a day centre.
But if you are a health-care worker, running between patients, working hard, doing your best, it's hard for you to know where the germs are lurking, and it's easy to forget".
Furthermore, physicians and nurses who are unfamiliar with their patients' working conditions may keep workers with minor injuries away from work longer than necessary.
A nascent movement under way is the development of better prognostic criteria for such patients, working against the false hopes that too often mark such care.
Extrapolating from this data, it has been suggested that the CCGs intend to spend as much as £120million over the next year on roughly 4,800 patients, working out as roughly £25,000 per patient.
The essential tenet of evidence-based medicine is that patients, working with their physicians and armed with medical data, are better equipped to make decisions that work for them than doctors of the Marcus Welby model are, because they understand their own expectations better than their physicians can.
