Many health care organizations across the country are taking leaps to address burnout. There are advisory boards formed solely to tackle the issue, access to yoga and meditation, as well as online programs and interactive workshops — just a few examples of efforts aimed at curbing this epidemic. These are steps in the right direction. However, physician burnout is a systemic problem, rooted deep in medicine’s culture, and these steps …
Read more…
The National Taskforce of Humanity in Healthcare recently published research showing physician burnout is impacting quality safety, and health care system performance — estimating that “costs for burnout-related turnover may be as high as $1.7B annually among hospital-employed physicians, and $17 billion across all U.S. physicians.” At Stanford Medicine, physician burnout costs at least $7.75M yearly.
These numbers are staggering. Growing numbers of physicians are leaving medicine (surely impacting the physician …
Read more…
I’ve interviewed many doctors on my podcast The Doctor’s Life. They share their stories of how they came to medicine and how they developed into the physicians that they are today. There are three common themes in these “origin stories”:
The first is that many of the doctors were mentored by a physician who inspired them to pursue medicine. The second is that they were “called” …
Read more…
Most physicians will be sued for malpractice during their career. A group at Harvard has estimated that by age 65, more than 75% of physicians in low-risk specialties such as family medicine and 99% of physicians in high-risk specialties such as surgery will have been sued. Over 95% of physicians do experience emotional distress during some or all of the process of litigation. Malpractice suits can take between …
Read more…
