(C) Minnesota Reformer
This story was originally published by Minnesota Reformer and is unaltered.
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You’ve heard about nurses, but doctors are burned out, too [1]
['More From Author', 'April', 'Elisabeth Slattery', 'M.D.']
Date: 2023-04-11
Strap your roller skates on.
Fast breakfasts, skipped lunches, dinners on the go, crummy nutrition and less than six hours of sleep becomes a norm, despite preaching healthy lifestyles to patients. Doctors stay calm under time pressures, as they make decisions with potential serious consequences. Hands fly across keyboards and cortisol levels thankfully meet expectations. Attempts are made to heal inefficiencies at the grocery store, pre-cook some meals and plan catch-up sleeps. The day flies by. Another day flies by. Wait, what did that patient say about the Twins?
Evenings and weekends are used for unfinished work, and all goes well until an unexpected guest stays the entire weekend, forcing work aside. This brings a gentle tap from administrators with reminders about the company’s benchmarks for work submissions. And oh, by the way, “they” voted to shorten the length of all patient visits “to help things flow better.” Meaning: their revenues.
At night, the electronic medical record dances in dreams, and in the morning, the brilliant doctor realizes a breaking point is near, prompting two written requests to cut down on work hours, and to stop taking new patients. Both proposals are rejected because the company needs the production volumes. Facing another day, with no control over schedule, patient loads, nor the endless typing, Dr. Google is consulted, who suggests yoga, more family time, religion and jogging, yet none of these remedies get the typing done. Locked in, a well-trained, hard-working provider might just fall into a dark, swirling hole.
The percentage of physicians experiencing burnout reached an all-time high of 62.8% at the end of 2021, adding to worries about physician shortages in a troubled U.S. health care industry.
Burnout is a work-related stress syndrome with symptoms of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, detached self-awareness, reduced professional efficiency and diminished personal accomplishment. It leaves clinicians at higher risk for suicide, broken relationships, divorce and substance abuse.
It can result in medical errors, lowered patient satisfaction, poor quality of care plus costly malpractice suits. Physicians in front-line care specialties are at greatest risk, including family practice, internal medicine and emergency medicine.
Burnout is directly related to a stressful work environment. There are several models which describe the progression of burnout, starting with a practitioner trying to prove themselves by working harder, then neglecting their own needs, displacing conflicts and revising personal values, leading to emptiness, withdrawal and depression.
Loss of work freedoms accentuates the problem, such as loss of schedule control, choice of work space, workloads, workmates, and work goals. Most physicians have lost their offices, share computers, and work in open spaces (so much for HIPPA) while administrators enjoy private offices, with the clear message that an administrator’s work is more confidential, sensitive and important than a physician’s.
Large multi-hospital corporations have overpowered worker freedoms by creating assembly line medicine while pocketing profits. The demand to speed up with fewer resources creates a frenetic and overwhelming work environment with frazzled workers, especially if the worker takes pride in their work product. Two old sayings describe burnout perfectly: “You can rally, but you can’t sustain,” and “When the going gets tough, the tough can get weird.”
The New York Times cites how Ascension, one of the largest U.S health systems, boasted saving $500 million on staffing in order to bolster their bottom lines.
“Chronic understaffing meant that patients languished in dried feces, while robots replaced nursing assistants who normally sit with mentally ill patients.” It describes how a single aide was on hand to assist 32 infected COVID-19 patients.
Burnout is causing a large physician and health care worker shortage. Staffing shortages and work overloads are leading causes of burnout. When will large multi-hospital health plans be held accountable for worker and patient atrocities? When will legislators and the public hear the cry of health care workers who sacrifice their own health for the sake of others?
Heightened government monitoring combined with accountable legislation would help set safe industry standards and reduce worker stress. A prompt, easily accessible, unbiased reporting and investigation system is needed to manage worker and public complaints.
While an army of psychiatrists would help place a band-aid on burnout syndrome, the problem will persist until we take a cold hard look at the medical ethics within health care delivery. Perhaps then, health care workers could safely, accurately and ethically care for the people of our country.
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[1] Url:
https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/04/11/physician-burnout-the-unspoken-truth/
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