Let me show you the origins of the whirlwind of practice overwhelm that is responsible for today's 63% physician burnout rate.

In the last post, we showed you the nature of this battle for your heart, mind, body and soul ... and why we are losing. 

In this post let me show you the forces that created your current Practice Whirlwind ... the hidden drivers of every keystroke, mouse click and frustrating meeting you must attend in your current job.

If doctors are the "frog in the boiling pot", this is the fire underneath. 

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The chaos and overwhelm of your current job is simple to understand when you realize your job was never designed for you.

• It was not constructed to meet your practice goals
• Or match your career desires
• Over 90% of physicians were never involved in the design of their current job description

If you don't understand who is in charge right now and learn how to take back your practice ... burnout is basically inevitable at some point in your career. 

Watch To Learn:
The Origin Story of Your Practice Whirlwind

The Lightworker vs. the Whirlwind

Physicians are losing the battle between their Lightworker Essence and the Whirlwind of the modern practice of medicine.

How do we know this?

The most recent national physician burnout prevalence study shows an all time high 63% burnout rate. Remember, this survey is a snapshot. What it means is 63% of doctors were "suffering from at least one symptom of burnout" on the day they took the survey.

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Our Burnout Proof MD 
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In the 6 minute video below, let me show you new ways of recognizing and preventing your own burnout ... and why I am optimistic you can take back your practice here in 2023.

Every week, dozens of physicians contact us or join our community here at TheHappyMD.com.

All of them are concerned about the little voice that says, "I'm not sure how much longer I can keep going like this."

These are the people who have been able to step around the main blocks to recognizing burnout - the physician's two prime directives.

• The Patient Comes First
• Never Show Weakness 
  
  

These doctors are the tip of the iceberg.

They are disobeying the programming of our medical education to ask for support. For every doctor that asks for help, there are hundreds, equally distressed, who are living the reality of Einstein's Insanity Trap. 

Remember, the most recent burnout survey shows daily prevalence of physician burnout is over 60% here in 2023.

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Make 2023 Your Best Year Yet
With our 10-Question Breakthrough Worksheet
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So let me ask a question from a different perspective.

Here is a funny, sweet, heartfelt, rhyming Advanced Directive written in the style of Theodor Geisel -- AKA Dr. Seuss

Please invest 5:27 right now in watching this lovely, lovely experience

Burnout Has 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 literally anything else.

You looked in the mirror and recognized you were not like a lot of your friends in school.

• You are smart, quick and enjoy challenges.
• You had really good grades and knew you could work harder than almost anyone else.
• As you contemplated the challenge of medical school, you felt you've got what it takes.
• And you felt called to make a difference; to be a helper and  healer.
• You knew this was an extraordinary choice, because so few people came with you to a career in medicine.
• You hoped this choice would enable you to have an extraordinary life.

You chose to be a LIGHTWORKER and here we are

A LIGHTWORKER:
From that choice point forward, you allied your professional life with the forces of LIGHT in the universe, as we battle specific forces of darkness:

• Illness
• Suffering
• Death and dying
• and family member's crazed attempts to deal with those things.

No matter what stage of your career you are in now, we can agree the choice to become a doctor had a life-long series of unintended consequences. We had only a small understanding of what was in store for us. 

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.

An anchor, a tether, a life line and a way back to yourself

All doctors - everyone who sees patients for a living - need a solid anchor.

If / when you fall in, you can pull yourself back to shore hand over hand, make it to dry land and catch your breath.

The conversation about physician burnout is often dominated by the term RESILIENCE. We doctors need to be tougher, more elastic, stop complaining. 

I ran into an alternate way of looking at this issue via a blog post by Brenda Osieyo

Here is the quote that inspired her and me; about maintaining an anchor and a way back to yourself now that you have chosen the Lightworker's Path - working with sick, hurting, scared, dying patients and their families.

Since the 1970's, studies have shown that Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an effective tool to lower the stress of the practice of medicine and prevent physician burnout.

Jon Kabat-Zinn and the pioneers at U Mass have proven that physicians who take their eight week meditation and yoga training have superior resilience skills and subsequent studies over the last 40 years have repeatedly confirmed their initial observations. 

In reviewing this literature, three big questions come to mind for most doctors.

1)  What is mindfulness anyway?

2)  Just how does mindfulness cause its therapeutic effect?

3)  Is eight weeks of meditation training the ONLY way to be mindful at work?

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Let me share my answers to these questions, coming from three different levels of experience:

A recent study reported in the NEJM reveals the Dose-Response Curve between hours worked by resident interns and depression prevalence. 

This was a huge study, over an 11 year time span, showing a powerful dose response curve between hours worked as a physician and depression prevalence. Said another way: too much time spent as a "provider" inside the healthcare delivery system is bad for your mental health.

I deliberately did not write, "too much time seeing patients" in the sentence above,  because we both know the "job" of being an intern or a practicing doctor is so much more complicated than just patient care. 

This is a massively important fundamental observation for all practicing physicians and for US national healthcare policy. 

Let's take a quick dive into the details.

Physicians have three sources of energy to draw upon in practice and their larger life

In this post you will learn:

• The differences in these 3 distinct types of energy
• The symptoms that arise when you are in the negative in any individual account
• How you fill each one to the brim

These simple principles will supercharge your ability to recognize and prevent your own physician burnout.