The Doctor Is Burned Out

Physician Burnout to Your Ideal Practice is possible using this first comprehensive stress-reduction resource for practicing physicians. You can be a modern physician and have an extraordinary life when you learn and practice the tools in this book. Use this book to STOP the downward spiral of physician burnout with field-tested, doctor-approved techniques discovered through thousands of hours of one-on-one coaching with physicians facing career threatening burnout.Dr. Dike Drummond MD, CEO and founder of TheHappyMD.com will show you burnout's symptoms, effects, and complications; burnout's pathophysiology and four main causes; how to bypass the invisible doctor "Mind Trash" that gets in the way of your recovery; 14 proven burnout prevention techniques and FREE access to an additional 15 techniques on our Power Tools web page - a private resource library; and a step-by-step method to build a more Ideal Practice and a more balanced life whether or not you are suffering from burnout at the moment.

Are you frustrated, fed up and fatigued? Most doctors are. Dr. Jeff Moody was. The demands of being a doctor combined with the pressure to perform regardless of any issues-or risk losing his medical license-left Dr. Moody feeling trapped, hopeless, and powerless. When he stopped to consider why he was feeling such despair, he realized the truth: he was suffering from burnout. If you are tired, frustrated, resentful, or feel like you have no control over your workload-let alone your life-you might be suffering from burnout, too. As burned out as you may be, it is not hopeless and you are not powerless. You have options, which Dr. Moody will show you. In The Doctor Is Burned Out, Dr. Moody will help you recover from burnout by first identifying the factors that led to your burnout. From there, he offers mental exercises, paradigm shifts, and critical habit changes-including suggestions for diet, exercise, and sleep-that can help you create a "new you" while enjoying a more satisfying, joyful life.

Patient-centered, high-quality health care relies on the well-being, health, and safety of health care clinicians. However, alarmingly high rates of clinician burnout in the United States are detrimental to the quality of care being provided, harmful to individuals in the workforce, and costly. It is important to take a systemic approach to address burnout that focuses on the structure, organization, and culture of health care. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being builds upon two groundbreaking reports from the past twenty years, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, which both called attention to the issues around patient safety and quality of care. This report explores the extent, consequences, and contributing factors of clinician burnout and provides a framework for a systems approach to clinician burnout and professional well-being, a research agenda to advance clinician well-being, and recommendations for the field.

When we need help, we count on doctors to put us back together. But what happens when doctors fall apart? Funny, fresh, and deeply affecting, We Are All Perfectly Fine is the story of a married mother of three on the brink of personal and professional collapse who attends rehab with a twist: a meditation retreat for burned-out doctors. Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: world-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief, as well as their deep-seated fear of falling short of the expectations that define them. Jillian realizes that her struggle with burnout is not so much personal as it is the result of a larger system failure, and that compartmentalizing your most difficult emotions—a coping strategy that is drilled into doctors—is not useful unless you face these emotions too. Jillian Horton throws open a window onto the flawed system that shapes medical professionals, revealing the rarely acknowledged stresses that lead doctors to depression and suicide, and emphasizing the crucial role of compassion not only in treating others, but also in taking care of ourselves.

Mayo Clinic Strategies to Reduce Burnout: 12 Actions to Create the Ideal Workplace tells the story of the evolving journey of those in the medical profession. It dwells not on the story of burnout, distress, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and cognitive dissonance but rather on a narrative of hope for professional fulfillment, well-being, joy, and camaraderie. Achieving this aim requires health care professionals and administrative leaders working together to create the ideal workplace-through nurturing positivity and pushing negativity aside. The ultimate aspiration is esprit de corps-the common spirit existing in members of a group that inspires enthusiasm, devotion, loyalty, camaraderie, engagement, and strong regard for the welfare of the team and of common interests and responsibilities. Mayo Clinic Strategies to Reduce Burnout: 12 Actions to Create the Ideal Workplace provides a road map for you to create esprit de corps for your team and organization. The map is paved with information about reliable, patient-centered, and thoughtful systems embedded within psychologically safe and just cultures. The authors drew on their extensive research on the well-being of health care professionals; from their experience in quality, department operations, leadership and organization development, management, safe havens, and care teams; and from their roles as president, chief wellness officer, chief quality officer, chair, principal investigator, senior fellow, and board director.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated burnout for clinicians and administrators alike, heightening the need for this practical guide that provides a comprehensive approach to empowering physicians while ensuring organizational resilience. In this second edition of Preventing Physician Burnout: Curing the Chaos and Returning Joy to the Practice of Medicine, doctors Paul DeChant and Diane Shannon define burnout, explore the consequences for physicians, patients, and the health care system, identify the underlying causes that are fueling the burnout epidemic, and provide case studies with specific interventions that have demonstrated success in healing the broken clinical workplace.Based on their experience and extensive interviews with experts in burnout, health care, and Lean management, they give voice to patient advocates, burnout researchers, leaders of health care organizations, and the physicians themselves. DeChant and Shannon also share examples of strategies that hospitals and physician practices across the United States are using to address the root causes of burnout among physicians, including action items for preventing burnout and curbing the crisis."It is hard to see how we can create the health care system we want and need on the backs of joyless and unengaged doctors. This well-written, practical book offers the prescription we need to address this crisis." Robert Wachter, MD, author of The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age

A look at the emotional side of medicine—the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients. How do the stresses of medical life—from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death—affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Danielle Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. With her renowned eye for dramatic detail, Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients and her forever fear of making another. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. But doctors don’t only feel fear, grief, and frustration. Ofri also reveals that doctors tell bad jokes about “toxic sock syndrome,” cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness. The stories here reveal the undeniable truth that emotions have a distinct effect on how doctors care for their patients. For both clinicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.

Edited by experts on burnout, five sections lay out the scope of the challenge and outline potential interventions. The introduction, which discusses the history and social context of burnout, provides psychiatrists who may be struggling with burnout with much-needed perspective. Subsequent sections discuss the potential effects of burnout on clinical care, contextual elements that may contribute to burnout, and, potential systemic and individual interventions.