"Everything was O.K. around here until you showed up"

This is Part Two of a series of 
Silly Things Physician Leaders Sometimes Say

Someone in the senior leadership team will often aim that comment at you after the successful launch of your burnout prevention program. I consider it a healthy sign for your organization. Senior leaders do not always share my viewpoint. 

Here is the simple - and silly - thinking behind that statement:

• Before your burnout prevention program launch no one talked about stress and burnout.
• Now everyone is talking about it and offering suggestions for improvements. 
• So it must be your fault, right?

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
~ Albert Einstein

[ The Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat is Here ]

Physician Burnout - Praying for a one-step solution is human nature and a trap!

One of the key features of physician burnout - or any supremely uncomfortable life circumstance - is a desire to run away, escape, make the pain stop. When you are deep in the downward spiral, your mind drops to its knees and prays for a simple, one-step solution to the agony and despair.

We ask basic questions like:

1. What can I do to fix/stop/solve this?
2. How long will it take?

Because our questions are simple, we assume a simple answer will come to our rescue.

That is the first mistake - especially if you are a physician leader looking to prevent physician burnout at a system level. 

We almost always ask the wrong questions.

In this blog post, let me show you the simplest way possible to prevent physician burnout in any healthcare organization that employs physicians. I promise to make it as simple as possible for you, but no simpler. 

THREE KEY DISTINCTIONS

Prevent Physician Burnout - curated resource libraries now available.

When you are aware that physician burnout is not a problem and understand its true nature as a never ending balancing act, it will become obvious you will never find a solution - the key is to focus on building your strategy to maintain balance.

We teach 117 ways to prevent burnout. Each has been proven in the real world by hundreds of physicians in all specialties AND that is a LOT of options to wade through. 

We are excited to share our new curated resource libraries so you can cut to the chase and find the best burnout prevention tools quickly and easily.

Use the links below to dive into our curated collections of tools to Get Home Sooner, Build Life Balance and become a More Effective Leader.

Each of the tools on this page will make sure you actually get home sooner. The library includes our EMR strategy recommendations, BID Huddle power tips, Batch Processing formula, the antidote to Multitasking and much more. All just a click away.

Preventing Physician Burnout – Current  Best Practices

In our work with the C-suite of healthcare organizations across the country, one question comes up consistently after our initial training delivery: “What can we do as an organization to take better care of our people?” It is the core question of an administrator that understands the Quadruple Aim.

Unfortunately these same leaders are often trapped in a subtle form of magic thinking. They hope my answer will provide them with a solution to the problem of burnout. That is never going to happen for one simple reason …

Burnout is not a problem. There is no solution.

This does not mean burnout cannot be addressed or that there is no way to take better care of the providers and staff.

The first step in the process is to call burnout by its true name.

Physician Burnout Rates Top 50% in latest Mayo Study - and that is not the worst of it

For a while now I have been suspicious that physician burnout rates are increasing here in the USA, especially in the last five years or so. I have been waiting for the research to catch up with my suspicions for a while now. Here is the smoking gun.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings this month published results of round two of their survey of burnout in physicians compared to burnout in the "normal population". The last round in 2011 was major news across the country and the first study that compared physician burnout rates to those of non-physician workers.

The burnout rates are what I expected. The shocker is the number of physicians screening positive for depression and suicidal ideation that no one is reporting on.

The headline trends are these

• From 2011 to 2014 physician burnout rates increased
• AND the gap between physician burnout rates and burnout rates in the normal population widened

The headline stats are these