In a market economy, business leaders take every opportunity to shrink the cost line of labor on the balance sheet to boost profits and shareholder/investor value. It’s the metric on which they are evaluated, and left unopposed; they will do it more and more.
The core strategy for shrinking labor costs (along with automation and offshoring) is to drive increased “efficiencies” by demanding more and more work from the same number …
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3 reasons why doctors don’t unionize
I have been reading, thinking and consulting for a while about the occupational health syndrome commonly referred to as burnout. As initially defined back in the 1970s, burnout is a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by one’s professional life. Extensive research shows that burnout (also called work “strain”) is the result of working conditions in which people have too much work, too little control, and too few resources.
Despite …
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From physician to provider to health care worker: Names matter, even in a pandemic
I have had the opportunity to consult with several physicians who needed to abruptly and permanently give up the practice of their chosen career without their consent. Causes of this involuntary termination included illness, burnout, and loss of license. What became very clear to them and to me was that the standard strategies for managing a work transition (e.g., defining transferable skills, exploring a range of job/work opportunities, learning new …
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A doctor dies twice
Many physicians will decide they want or need to make a transition from the practice of clinical medicine to “something else” at some point during their career. Whatever the motivation for their job transition, most doctors appreciate a rational, structured process that enables then to get from where they are to where they want to be. Fortunately, there are some easily accessible resources that can add value to your work/career …
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A roadmap for physician career transition planning
How would you make sense of the following vignette:
- Over a 40-plus-year period, a disease (“X”) is diagnosed, its causes are defined, and effective treatments are prescribed
- 30-50+ percent of people working in your organization are currently suffering from X and cry out for relief
- The stakeholders in your organization not only fail to apply best practices for preventing/curing X; they actually enable the drivers/vectors of the epidemic to intensify
As …
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Why are we failing to solve burnout?
