Gail Gazelleis an internal medicine physician, physician coach, and the author ofEveryday Resilience: A Practical Guide to Build Inner Strength and Weather Life’s Challengesand the forthcomingMindful MD. 6 Ways Mindfulness Restores Your Autonomy and Cures Healthcare Burnout.
What’s one of the biggest complaints we physicians have about the current state of our jobs? It’s that we’ve lost our autonomy, that it has been taken from us by a health care system more focused on profits than on the well-being of patients and ourselves.
As a physician, you know firsthand how dysfunctional health care has become. There is abundant evidence that the modern health care system is more than …
Let’s face it, what’s getting most physicians down is not their patients. No, ask any group of physicians what the hardest part of the job is, and you’ll like get a pretty consistent response: It’s the EMR! With studies showing that we spend, on average, two hours on “paperwork” for every hour in the room with a patient, there’s no question that it is a massive time suck for most. …
For most clinicians, this will sound familiar:
I can feel the resentment bubbling up as I sit down to chart on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’ve got dozens of charts hanging over me, and if I don’t get them closed, there will be yet another miserable head thrashing with my practice admin. My kids are clamoring for my time, and every fiber of my being is resisting getting these charts done. …
Before the pandemic, we had an epidemic of physician burnout, with many physicians caught in a cycle of exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of purpose. All the change and uncertainty the virus has brought certainly doesn’t help! It’s now more imperative than ever that physicians build resilience to all the pressures and stress of our careers.
In the decade I’ve worked as a physician coach, I’ve seen seven habits, thought patterns, and …
Two hours of administrative tasks for every hour with patients. A proliferation of non-physician administrators deciding how the day is going to run. Little in our training about how to cope with uncertainty and change. It’s no surprise that burnout rates are approaching 60 percent. Despite being so common, when we see a colleague struggling with physician burnout, we may not know what to say. Responding appropriately can bring someone …
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