A Weekly Email Ends Physician Burnout
Physician burnout is bad. Doctors continue to quit, retire or kill themselves. There are many reasons this is occurring but the biggest is the pressures of today’s healthcare system. So how do we fix it? Easy. A program called Lumunos, created by administrators, sends out a weekly email that addresses a specific subject, such as how to say no to patients with compassion and clarity. About 350 physicians across all participating hospitals currently receive the email. That’s not all. “Those emails build to monthly 45-minute meetings led by a facilitator who keeps the conversation productive and focused.” Okay, I will stop myself there. I do appreciate any attempt to help with physician burnout but without fixing the cause then all you are getting are doctors deleting these emails. Guaranteed.
Some of the hospitals also hold evening dinner meetings every few months based on a model called Finding Meaning in Medicine developed by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. A few hospitals also host annual retreats for doctors and their families.
Do you think doctors love going back out at night for these meetings? Once again, the loss of control is the issue. Emails and meetings may help but, without addressing the real issues, doctors will continue to fry.
And, by the way, I went on the Lumunos site and never saw any metrics or studies proving that it works. I thought that stuff was supposed to be important?
Well the administrators are working on taking over medicine, so they start with psych….
Weekly emails to combat physician burnout? Then monthly meetings??? That’s as good a parody as anything you ever had in Placebo Journal! ????????????
Burn out implies that we can’t live up to the standards “they” have set again blaming the whole problem on the physicians. Any administrator should have bedside experience. That should cut down the numbers significantly. Too many ” metrics” show that we are high priced, highly educated button pushing clerks. ” If a physician is doing a job that someone can do is wasting their time and talent for those individuals who cannot do our job.”
Nah.
Just wrap it up in some touchy-feely language with a dash of some home-spun pseudo-wisdom and commence cashing checks.
I think they’ve hit on a critical point. Physicians have been left to themselves to maintain sanity. I propose a standardized physician Maintenance of Sanity (MOS) curriculum that’s mandatory for licensure, and maintenance of life insurance with suicide coverage. Physicians have all too often been negligent and careless in the maintenance of their sanity, and there are no standard best practices for Maintenance of Sanity.
Perhaps a mandatory board certification in Sanity should be required for all physicians, with disciplinary action if they do not keep up with their Certified Sanity Equivalents (CSE). Perhaps the ABMS can coordinate with the State Boards and Medical Schools in developing a program, and credentialing and certification will necessarily contain a “sanity clause” for continuing enrollment.
What, there ain’t no Sanity Clause? Sheesh.
Excellent suggestion.
What the hell? “Finding meaning in medicine”????
Medicine had meaning until they stripped it out