Here ’s what Dr. Seuss can teach real doctors about burnout

While driving home from a weekend trip, my children were watching The Lorax in the backseat, and I couldn’t help but think how acutely applicable its theme is to the current state of medicine in America. Just as seemingly small changes in the name of “progress” slowly altered the environment in The Lorax, a handful of mostly well-intended modifications have transformed the landscape of medicine into something unrecognizable and unsustainable. We now find ourselves in a place where primary care physician burnout is over 50 percent, and excellent physicians are leaving medicine for careers involving less stress and better work-life balance. But irrespective of the stress and the hours, the thing that ultimately pushes many good physicians out of medicine is the recognition that despite our best efforts, working within “the system” means providing substandard care. Our patients can no longer get in touch with us when needed; rather their calls are shuttled to an off-site facility with no first-hand knowledge of the patient, the doctor or the facility. Our larger organizations burden us with so many computerized housekeeping tasks that we are only able to fully engage with the patient about their concerns for half of our already constrained 15-minute appointments. At every turn, we are asked to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness without sacrificing quality. But our patients are too smart for this. They can ascertain when their physician is burned out, and no long...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Policy Practice Management Primary Care Public Health & Source Type: blogs