Chasing numbers contributes to physician burnout

A store cashier sees dozens of customers during a shift. A car tire shop mechanic may work on 20 cars. Workdays can be hard across professions. Medicine surely does not escape this. We just don’t deal with customers or goods, despite efforts to make it look like that. A simple runny nose visit may be the closest thing to a customer who is there for a simple transaction, and in reality, they don’t even need to be there. Yet, they are welcomed additions to the daily treadmill of the “provider” to balance out the complexity of taking care of people with actual medical conditions. After all, it is a numbers game, and we have to meet our numbers. When all the customers are gone, we sit down to document every bit of the healing transactions. We do touch-up work on the paintings to make them look human and then try to reflect our own humanity somewhere in the picture before signing and dating the canvas. We hold the brush one more time, make a last ditch effort to recall the features of the human faces who have now gone home, but we realize we didn’t spend enough time studying them. It’s frustrating because yes, I do care about those features. I remember the first week when I met my numbers at the clinic, and an all-smile clinic manager walked by my desk and celebrated my milestone with a cheerful “look at you, you met your numbers!” I remember how I felt dead inside, because that was the first week on my job when I felt I failed patients. I just was not able to full...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Policy Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs