Burned out? Change your practice

This month’s cover story addresses a phenomenon familiar to all of us: burnout. Mohanty and colleagues provide an excellent, concise summary of what burnout is, the probable causes of it, and possible solutions.

What has puzzled me about burnout is why there was no discussion of it 30 years ago when physicians worked easily as many hours but did not complain of being “burned out.” We just described ourselves as being tired. One could argue that the disconnect is due to a change in physicians’ expectations, but that theory does not hold up because burnout is common in both older and younger physicians.

No amount of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or exercise will be sufficient to combat physician burnout.

I think that Dr. Wendy Dean, a psychiatrist at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, and her colleagues are correct in identifying a different culprit. They contend that the real issue is that we are “increasingly forced to consider the demands of other stakeholders—the electronic medical record (EMR), the insurers, the hospital, the health care system, even our own financial security—before the needs of our patients.”¹ To redefine the problem of burnout, Dr. Dean uses a different term to label this phenomenon of exhaustion, demoralization, and depersonalization. She calls it “moral injury.”

“Moral injury . . . describes the challenge of simultaneously knowing what care patients need but being unable to provide it due to constraints that are beyond our control.”¹

So what needs to change? No amount of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or exercise will be sufficient, although these are great therapeutic activities. Office redesign, however, has already been shown to be highly effective in reducing physician burnout. For example, in an intensive practice redesign project in Colorado that included hiring more medical assistants, physician burnout declined from 56% to 25% in the first practice and from 40% to 0% in the second practice!²

One of the oldest examples of using team care to reduce physician burnout was implemented by Dr. Peter Anderson in 2003.³ Dr. Anderson was on the brink of throwing in the towel when he hired a second nurse and redistributed many tasks to the nurses. In a few years he had a thriving and satisfying practice for himself, his staff, and his patients.

These are only 2 examples of many successful redesign projects around the country. If you are getting burned out, change your practice, not yourself.

This month’s cover story addresses a phenomenon familiar to all of us: burnout. Mohanty and colleagues provide an excellent, concise summary of what burnout is, the probable causes of it, and possible solutions.

What has puzzled me about burnout is why there was no discussion of it 30 years ago when physicians worked easily as many hours but did not complain of being “burned out.” We just described ourselves as being tired. One could argue that the disconnect is due to a change in physicians’ expectations, but that theory does not hold up because burnout is common in both older and younger physicians.

No amount of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or exercise will be sufficient to combat physician burnout.

I think that Dr. Wendy Dean, a psychiatrist at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, and her colleagues are correct in identifying a different culprit. They contend that the real issue is that we are “increasingly forced to consider the demands of other stakeholders—the electronic medical record (EMR), the insurers, the hospital, the health care system, even our own financial security—before the needs of our patients.”¹ To redefine the problem of burnout, Dr. Dean uses a different term to label this phenomenon of exhaustion, demoralization, and depersonalization. She calls it “moral injury.”

“Moral injury . . . describes the challenge of simultaneously knowing what care patients need but being unable to provide it due to constraints that are beyond our control.”¹

So what needs to change? No amount of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or exercise will be sufficient, although these are great therapeutic activities. Office redesign, however, has already been shown to be highly effective in reducing physician burnout. For example, in an intensive practice redesign project in Colorado that included hiring more medical assistants, physician burnout declined from 56% to 25% in the first practice and from 40% to 0% in the second practice!²

One of the oldest examples of using team care to reduce physician burnout was implemented by Dr. Peter Anderson in 2003.³ Dr. Anderson was on the brink of throwing in the towel when he hired a second nurse and redistributed many tasks to the nurses. In a few years he had a thriving and satisfying practice for himself, his staff, and his patients.

These are only 2 examples of many successful redesign projects around the country. If you are getting burned out, change your practice, not yourself.

This month’s cover story addresses a phenomenon familiar to all of us: burnout. Mohanty and colleagues provide an excellent, concise summary of what burnout is, the probable causes of it, and possible solutions.

What has puzzled me about burnout is why there was no discussion of it 30 years ago when physicians worked easily as many hours but did not complain of being “burned out.” We just described ourselves as being tired. One could argue that the disconnect is due to a change in physicians’ expectations, but that theory does not hold up because burnout is common in both older and younger physicians.

No amount of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or exercise will be sufficient to combat physician burnout.

I think that Dr. Wendy Dean, a psychiatrist at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, and her colleagues are correct in identifying a different culprit. They contend that the real issue is that we are “increasingly forced to consider the demands of other stakeholders—the electronic medical record (EMR), the insurers, the hospital, the health care system, even our own financial security—before the needs of our patients.”¹ To redefine the problem of burnout, Dr. Dean uses a different term to label this phenomenon of exhaustion, demoralization, and depersonalization. She calls it “moral injury.”

“Moral injury . . . describes the challenge of simultaneously knowing what care patients need but being unable to provide it due to constraints that are beyond our control.”¹

So what needs to change? No amount of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or exercise will be sufficient, although these are great therapeutic activities. Office redesign, however, has already been shown to be highly effective in reducing physician burnout. For example, in an intensive practice redesign project in Colorado that included hiring more medical assistants, physician burnout declined from 56% to 25% in the first practice and from 40% to 0% in the second practice!²

One of the oldest examples of using team care to reduce physician burnout was implemented by Dr. Peter Anderson in 2003.³ Dr. Anderson was on the brink of throwing in the towel when he hired a second nurse and redistributed many tasks to the nurses. In a few years he had a thriving and satisfying practice for himself, his staff, and his patients.

These are only 2 examples of many successful redesign projects around the country. If you are getting burned out, change your practice, not yourself.