When burnout forces you to reverse the bad habits of our training - normal self-care can seem like an act of courage

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This is Blog Post #288
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Burnout is your destiny trying to get your attention. It's objective - wake you up and knock you onto a path with more purpose.

Most of the time, it must grind you to a state of complete exhaustion, before you will begin to challenge the habits that got you here. Those survival habits were learned in the crucible of your residency. Learning to take better care of yourself won't come easily.

And if you are lucky, burnout finally gets you to look in the mirror and ask, "Is THIS what I really want in my life and my practice?"

If you recover, better self-care will be a significant piece of your strategy. You realize you don't have to live your life like a resident. There are other options.

• You will learn how turn off your "the patient comes first" programming when you are not at work
• You will find new ways to take better care of yourself - to put your mask on first
• Rest - Nutrition - Vacations/Holidays - even a little pampering here and there - will all play a role. 

Then you run into the next obstacle. 

As soon as you start taking better care of yourself, GUILT will often rear its ugly head.

The consensus is clear, EMR and documentation overload is the single largest source of stress for most physicians.

How did it come to this?

Because forcing physicians to both take care of patients AND perform as a data entry clerk is bad for everyone involved - the patient, the doctor, the doctor's staff and family ... EVERYBODY.

We already have studies showing two hours of documentation chores for every one hour of direct patient care. This documentation disaster already has a slang term for its ability to destroy doctor's family life - "pajama time".

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This is Blog Post #287
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In this blog post let me show you:

• A single graph that perfectly expresses the overwhelm, specifically for US doctors - check it out
• Four reasons why this is happening, specifically to US doctors
• Four ways to immediately ease your documentation workload - things you can do now, rather than wait for the EMR industry to fix itself
  
  

1) A Single Graph that Says it All for US Doctors

Last week, the major healthcare organizations in Massachusetts all agreed that the physician burnout epidemic is a public health crisis ...

... and then missed the mark with their recommendations. 

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This is Blog Post #286
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The Mass Health and Hospital Association, Mass Med Society, Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Global Health Initiative published a position paper titled: 

"A crisis in health care:
A call to action on Physician Burnout"

What took them so long you might wonder. 

Since they are coming late to the party, you would expect they will rock the RECOMMENDATIONS section of their White Paper, right?

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In this post, let me use the sharp edge of our 10,000 hours of real world experience treating and preventing burnout with 163 client organizations to date --

... to show you exactly how the four main recommendations of this consensus statement of academics Miss the Mark.

I can assure you things are a little different at ground level than they may appear from a literature review in the ivory tower. 

Let's Dive In. 

Primum Non Actio Stupidus

• STOP making the doctors and nurses do stupid things

• If you want to know what these stupid things are ... all you have to do is ask the doctors and nurses

Primum Non Actio Stupidus

Thank you so much for allowing us to serve you and learn from you in 2018.

Peace, Rest, Gratitude to you and your family in this Holiday Season!

Here are three blog posts tailor made for the holidays.

Burnout Has One of its Roots in a Choice You Made a Long Time Ago ... You Chose to Be a Lightworker

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This is Blog Post #283
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Remember back when you decided to go to medical school?

Remember that fork in the road. You could apply to medical school. OR you could do anything else. You chose to become a doctor and here we are. I think we can agree none of us had any awareness of the full array of life-long consequences that decision threw into play. Right?

In this blog post let me show you
1) A deeper understanding of some of the most difficult aspects of being a doctor 
2) And six of our most popular tools to maintain your energy, faith and empathy when things get tough.

"The secret to permanently breaking any bad habit is to love something greater than the habit." ~ Bryant McGill

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This is Blog Post #282
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Habits are powerful behavior patterns with predictable results. To change your practice and your quality of life, you must change your habits.

Repeat the Same Action => You will always get the Same Result
That is a Habit and that is also Einstein's Insanity Trap.

Some Habits produce desirable results.
We call those Good Habits. 

Some Habits produce undesirable results.
We typically call those Bad Habits - weaknesses, foibles, character flaws, "the human condition", addictions, Achille's heels.

These are both habits of DOING
Things You DO that are either good or bad

Every time you survey a group of physicians on their biggest stressors, Electronic Medical Records is a clear #1.

Why is that? Why are the implementation of electronic medical records and the dramatic increase in physician burnout synchronous?

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This is Blog Post #281
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In my work with over 140 healthcare organizations to date, the answer is plain as day on nearly every job site I have visited:

This is simple OVERWHELM - in the front lines of patient care, there is too much work and not enough hands on deck

The whirlwind of EMR has destroyed many physician's ability to be effective at the point of care. It is a constant distraction to quality decisions, effective communication and a clear threat to the health and wellbeing of the physicians and their staff members.

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Key Resource:
The Burnout Prevention Strategy Engine
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Electronic Medical Records and other sources of digital overload (texts, email, patient portals, cell phone apps) have changed the nature of a physician's work and massively increased the number of tasks at the point of care. Studies show doctors spend up to two hours in the EMR for every hour of face time with patients.

It would be No Big Deal if the healthcare industry had done the most appropriate thing ... increased staffing levels to handle the increased workload. With rare exception, employers have simply dumped the data entry responsibilities on the doctors and other front line staff.

This is a completely avoidable crisis.

Ineffective management of digital overload has turned EMR into a Physician Burnout Issue ...
when it should simply be a Staffing Issue !!

All doctors practice medicine from within the center of a powerful whirlwind

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This is Blog Post #278
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Your practice is a mini-tornado of:

• Repetitive actions with your patients and staff
• Thousands of clicks and keystrokes in documentation
• Competing demands for your attention from email/text/voicemail
• And dozens of decisions, some of which actually involve life and death

And that's a slow day ... right?

It is a legitimate whirlwind - a Dorothy-on-the-Kansas-prairie twister that can tie you up in knots and even make you forget you forgot lunch ... sometimes. That same whirlwind is a core cause of physician burnout too.

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Related:
Our Complete Burnout Prevention Tools Library
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How is Your Whirlwind Feeling These Days?

You get to decide how satisfied you are with your practice. You can do that right now quite simply - even though you have been conditioned to NOT ask yourself questions like these:

Physician Burnout Key Personal Defense Skills Podcast - Complete Your Medical Education 

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This is Blog Post #277
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Lower your stress levels, build more life balance and a more Ideal Practice. Complete your medical education and learn to recognize and prevent burnout in yourself and others.

Had a really good first conversation with Taylor Brana over at TheHappyDoc. In it we go over a number of the basic patterns in burnout risks and burnout prevention we have learned in our work with thousands of burned out physicians in our coaching practices. Great to be able to share and Taylor is allowing me to mount the podcast here on our website as well. Enjoy,

TRANSCRIPT: