The Elephant in the Room
The new findings are “certainly a call to action, but it’s hard to avoid the elephant in the room, which is COVID-19,” said panelist Sandra Lewis, MD, Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital & Medical Center, Portland, Oregon.
“The implications of burnout are really front-and-center with our colleagues, who are working long hours, have hectic work environments, lack of control, and, more than that, a lack of safety of the work situations that we have worked so hard to achieve, as we run out of protective gear, we don’t have masks, as we see our colleagues falling victim to this.”
During her presentation, Mehta highlighted the ACC Clinician Well Being Portal and its COVID-19 Hub, but also several self-care strategies to employ, such as relinquishing control during these uncharted waters, revisiting personal strengths and abilities leveraged in other times of uncertainty, and giving yourself a “brain break” by challenging yourself to chat with a colleague for 30 minutes on topics unrelated to COVID-19 and other workplace stressors.
Wilson said the global pandemic only heightens concerns about burnout among cardiologists, which he likened to a “runaway train.”
“These are not great signals, I think they’re shocking, quite frankly,” Wilson told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.
“ACC is setting up a task force from the board of trustees to get to work right away and see about ways we can turn this around as quickly as possible and be a voice for the clinicians,” he said. “It’s not only cardiologists, it’s everybody on our cardiovascular care team, including nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and even pharmacists. Everybody’s burning out.”
The authors and Wilson report no relevant conflicts of interest.
American College of Cardiology 2020 Scientific Session (ACC.20)/World Congress of Cardiology (WCC). Abstract 403.08. Presented March 28, 2020.
This article first appeared on Medscape.com.