Feeling the Burn of Physicians Burnout?

Finding Joy in Medicine

Are you tired of spending more time charting than with your patients? Frustrated with calling insurance companies so your patients can get care? Feeling pressure to see more patients, do more surgeries, but don’t where you will find the time?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are among the 55-75% of doctors experiencing physicians burnout right now. Burnout is a state of feeling emotionally exhausted after expending a great amount of effort over a long period of time. Feeling like you cannot accomplish your goals, much less get ahead, adds to feelings of burnout. A recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that doctors are spending only a quarter of their time at work with patients. That percent is staggering. What other job do you only spend 1½ days out of your work week doing the job that you were hired to do?

The healthcare delivery system right now is a perfect storm to cause physicians burnout. Insurance companies are paying doctors and hospitals less and less money for the same work they have been doing for years. So, doctors feel pressured to see more patients in less time to make the same amount of money. Also, insurance companies deny more and more patients services or medicines unless the doctor gets on the phone with a doctor, hired by the insurance company, and convinces them that their patient truly needs the care recommended. Further, documentation of patient visits using electronic medical records is adding to stress and taking doctors’ time away from patients. These systems are clunky at best, and until they become more streamlined, will continue to force doctors to choose between entering data during an office visit, or giving up their precious family or personal time at night to keep charts up to date.

Physicians burnout can leave you dreading your next work day or call night. Emotional exhaustion is one of the hallmark signs of burnout. Lower patient satisfaction scores can be a sign that your focus may be drifting away from your patients and more towards getting your charts completed. If you’ve stopped setting career goals, it could be a sign that you feel goal setting is pointless. The rules may seem to be changing faster than you can keep up, so what is the point?

In response to physicians burnout, some doctors are choosing early retirement or a midlife career change, laying waste to a talent that they spent 20+ years of schooling and training to perfect. This, combined with the growing and aging population, is leading to a vast shortage of physicians. Estimates suggest that in the United States, we will need an additional 130,000 doctors by 2025 to keep up with healthcare needs. Doctors that choose to “push through” the challenges, instead of retiring or changing careers, often develop severe mental stress. As a result, we see a dramatic increase in doctors being fired for anger management or substance abuse issues in recent years. The emergence of the new terminology of a “disruptive physician” in many hospital and practice by-laws highlights the significant increase in this problem.

So, what is a doctor to do about physicians burnout? One way to help find solutions is through  coaching programs. Coaching is a practice where a trained professional asks a series of questions to help a client understand more fully the problem they have and to help them identify solutions to the problem. Coaching is different from mentoring, as a mentor provides guidance or answers to a problem. In coaching we believe that you, the client, the doctor, have all the answers yourself. Coaching helps to shine light on these answers that are often buried under strong emotions that develop around life and work stressors. There are a number of professional coaches in the world today. Very few focus solely on helping physicians. Physicians burnout represents a unique issue that is best understood by those that have dealt with similar issues. Our coaches are all medical professionals who have themselves experienced burnout and have found a way to the other side. Let us help you find the answers to building or adjusting your practice that rediscover your passion for medicine. Don’t give up on the talents you worked so hard to develop. You, as a physician, add massive value to your patients. Coaching can help you continue to do what you do best – help others – while helping you find joy again in medicine.

Schedule your free consultation to learn more.