Medicalizing burnout misses the real problem
The solution to the physician burnout crisis isn’t more diagnoses or interventions. The antidote isn’t more modules, surveys, screenings, or questionnaires. What’s needed is cultural healing: One that we have so far been unwilling and/or too depleted to attempt.
Over the past decade, physician wellness has been medicalized. We’ve absorbed it into the very system that made us unwell. We’ve labeled it as pathology—when in fact, it’s a predictable outcome of …