“Toward the end of my clinical career, I didn’t feel like I had control over much at all. The patient safety issues loomed large. We used ridiculous workarounds for broken processes. The constant vigilance to provide excellent care in a suboptimal environment was exhausting. I didn’t see anything I could change. Based on my work with physicians as a coach, I think that the sense of powerlessness and being a “cog in a wheel” is now at an all-time high.
While on an uninspiring stretch of road on a recent family trip, a realization came to me: There are many, many system issues over which physicians have little control. But physicians do have control over three things:
- How they lead in both formal and informal leadership roles
- How effectively they advocate for change
- Who they show up as every day”
Diane W. Shannon is an internal medicine physician and physician coach and can be reached at her self-titled site, Diane W. Shannon.
She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “The sense of powerlessness and being a cog in a wheel is now at an all-time high.”
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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
