Who is Christine Sinsky, MD?
Not too long ago Pat Conrad MD blogged here about the AMA’s attempt to fix burnout. The main expert was Christine Sinsky, MD who is now the AMA’s Vice President of Professional Satisfaction. As Conrad pointed out, WTF is that anyway? Christine Sinsky, MD coauthored a 2015 Mayo study that found: physician burnout had risen 15% since 2011, to 54 Sinsky says, “It’s a cumulative effect of well-intended efforts adding up to a burden of work that no one anticipated.”
So, who is Christine Sinsky? It turns out that she is a member of the Board of Trustees of the ABIM Foundation and a director of the American Board of Internal Medicine. This is the same organizations found to be corrupt by Wes Fisher MD. Interesting. How is it that someone can be so high up in the the AMA, the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation? Is this one, big, good old “boys and girls” club? What am I missing here?
I first heard of the Drs. Sinsky at a Primed conference in Chicago about 2-4 years ago. They were the keynote speakers. They had a primary care practice in Dubuque Iowa. They outlined how not to get burned out. By a system of hiring 2 medical assistants for each MD in their practice. They touted a pre visit blood work, etc, etc
Never tried it in my practice.
Next thing I know Dr Sinsky is an expert on how to manage a practice, not get burned out, buy more help and go on the road for them AMA. I wonder if she is still seeing patients
Funny, a vice president of physician satisfaction. There is no physician satisfaction.
Irrelevant. The point is to sell her consulting services.
Do not worry about Christine. Her job has nothing to do with you. The mindless corporatization of medicine into the “healthcare industry” has been going on for twenty or thirty years now. Christine is a symptom, a dire one. She is the director of HR, and must come up with innovative solutions to why the workforce is shiftless and lazy. Doctors are about 15 years behind nurses in the silent revolution. People like Christine sit on boards and get yelled at because “providers” are becoming increasingly uninterested in the profession. She was the sort of nurse that went around on nurse’s day giving out balloons and cheery “Nurses Call The Shots!” coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets. But when positive reinforcement fails, out rides the man with the whip, to get things going.
When people are shackled and subdued, controlled and commanded, they detach; they become shiftless, lazy and no’count. I have no doubt that plantation slaves in the Old South were untrustworthy, lazy and dishonest. Unless work’s sense of human dignity, most people do a shoddy job at it.
Christine has to answer for it. Now that we have almost murdered healthcare, why is it almost dead? This was the terrible conflict that the leaders of the Kremlin faced under Gorbachev – we are stagnating, falling behind, no matter how much money and effort is spent making the workers try harder? Make them work better. But do not tamper with the organs of control! Help the emperor warm up in the chill – but don’t say that he has no clothes!
Expect more coffee cups from Christine, and “attaboy doc!” lapel pins (not allowed at work because they have pointy tips.) Stagnation is a quiet and ugly way to go, but that is often what happens at the end. The miracle solution is easy – DPC is an example of it. But I am pessimistic when the Christines of the world attempt to crush and co-opt DPC. In such a world as DPC, the Christines have no meaning – they would actually have to see patients. Other than find a solution, what can we do about the problem? That question keeps Christine jetting from coast to coast, going to critical meetings and workforce study groups.
It’s not a bad job for people who don’t care about being doctors – not in the messy, sticky, wonderful, see-patients kind of way. Christine will help liberate doctors from seeing patients, and leave that to the Gingrich wonderbox telemedicine of Dr. Watson. Hooray!
Correction:
Unless work’s sense of human dignity, most people do a shoddy job at it.Try: “Unless work nourishes one’s soul by providing a sense of human dignity”
PS: I saw a young friend-of-a-friend informally. She had a classic, textbook transient hyperthyroidism from a thyroiditis of unknown etiology. Her neck had been hurting when she swallowed, so her regular doctor ordered an EGD. (no other tests.) I recommended that she return to see her “care provider” for thyroid testing.
I was infuriated.
Someone shows you their new pet. You see that it’s pet goat, you pet and talk to the pet goat and examine the pet goat – and your friend complains that the pet won’t eat its cat food.
That’s the kind of people coming out now from the educational canal – can’t tell reflux pharyngitis from thyroiditis. And they wonder about containing healthcare costs? When someone can’t tell the results of the sh*t-from-Shinola test, what do you expect?
Why have we allowed EVERYTHING to be dumped into the diagnostic wastebin of “I Dunno?” All these exquisite codes for onychomycosis of your right thumbnail, etc., and nobody can tell what’s going on.
I wonder when was the last time she touched a patient? Being on a board presumably making 6 figures how can this “good ol’ girl” possibly know about burnout?
http://www.drsinsky.com/about/
She and her husband are both primary care docs, who somehow have the time to travel as consultants while serving with ABIM and AMA.
… And of course, have all the time in the world to have a wonderful life…
Whats an AMA ? Some sort of far left medical group supporting Obamacare ?
Doug, you missed nothing. Once again, thanks for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Someday maybe people won’t accept being told that it’s raining when they piss on us.