Mindful Daily Practice Offers an Antidote to Healthcare Burnout
By GREG HAMMER, MD
Burnout among healthcare professionals is at an all-time
high. Its drivers include longer work hours, the push to see more patients,
more scrutiny by administrators, and loss of control over our practice. We seem
to spend more time with the electronic medical record and less time
face-to-face with our patients.
I have faced burnout personally. My son passed away at the
age of 29, which was beyond painful. At the same time, I felt burdened by the
growing number and complexity of metrics by which I was judged at work. Days in
the operating room and intensive care unit seemed more and more exhausting, and
my patience was becoming shorter and shorter. I was fortunate to have had a long-standing
meditation practice as well as sabbatical time that I used to decompress and
re-evaluate my career. Many of us are not so lucky. More than half of
physicians have serious signs of burnout, and more than one physician commits
suicide every day.
So many of us feel burned out these days because in our
rapidly changing profession we are asked to do more for less and with
inadequate resources. We suffer from exhaustion, self-criticism, and worry
about what will happen next to our practice, our families, and ourselves. If we
want to save our practices, patients, marriages- even our lives, we must
acquire personal resilience.
Fortunately, we can increase our resilience and happiness and reverse burnout by embracing a few simple principles—Gratitude, Acceptance, I...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Burnout GAIN GAIN without Pain: The Happiness Handbook for Health Care Professionals Greg Hammer physician burnout physician wellness Source Type: blogs
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