The Stages of Burnout
I found the above image here and am trying to connect it to the physician experience. And I can’t. For one, there seems to be an emphasis on YOU. I am all for self-determination and taking responsibility but this infographic proves the world has no idea what is happening to doctors. The outside pressures of EHRs, metrics, patient needs, guilt, loss of family time, impostor syndrome, moronic administrators, and on and on would blow this chart up.
Am I wrong? Does anyone else want to redo this STAGES of BURNOUT for physicians?
The Emergency Department has become a 24-hour free clinic. All Primary Care-Medicaid, all the time. The ‘entitled’ certainly feel entitled. They are the most demanding and would be the first to sue. So far I’ve dodged that bullet, but I know it’s coming if I don’t find a way out! I get frustrated paying 6-figures in tax and watch it wasted. I HATE metrics. My ‘because I said so’ button went away a long time ago. Now the EMRs actually have us doing the coding! For some reason, when they got rid of the coders I didn’t get their checks added to mine. The system is fully rigged to enrich the government, big Pharma, and the insurance companies. I’m burned out and know it, but will likely die in the exam room, trying to ‘save’ some poor soul with a sore throat x 10 days that couldn’t see his/her PCP in that time and arrived in an ambulance!
“You’re a PROFESSIONAL”
Administrative jerks beat you over the head with that.
I learned as a medical student, the word “Professional” coming out of the mouths of administrators, means they are about to add to your burdens.
Maybe it doesn’t fit physicians because it isn’t labelled correctly. For physicians it isn’t the stages of “burnout”, it’s the stages of “enslavement”.
Don’t know where it fits in this chart, but seems like a key factor in physician burnout is being forced to do work that you know very well is not worth doing, and then being forced to prioritize that worthless crap ahead of patient care.
I see this kind of thing and it concerns me greatly that our wonderful family Doc and other Docs we rely on take care of themselves too.
It starts with Stage 1, except it’s not a feeling, but a fact. Why? We all completed medical school and residency. Thinking back to the old days, what if every time someone added to our reasponsibilties we said that’s ridiculous, we already have too many. No, instead the 1995 E and M guidelines were soon followed by fraudulent reviews of symptoms. It actually worked in 1997 when grassroots docs en masses objected when they wanted to make it worse. The lesson learned should have been to do that in any situation like 1995 before it got entrenched.
But our notion of heirarchy from our education meant there were docs so privileged as to be free of these requirements who didn’t mind making all the others do it. And the rest still “felt” that they didn’t have a voice and had to prove their capabilities so pretended they could do more mundane busywork and still get thier essential work done.
Let’s go back to recognizing we are all professionals. No need to continue having to prove it.