Here is Dr. Zubin Damania's take on the intersection of happiness and the experience of being a hospitalist

Please Leave a Comment 

How does his message and his story resonate with you?

Will the government step in and legislate proactive efforts to stop physician burnout?

As we predicted several weeks ago, it is only a matter of time before the cry for legislative action would go out. And rightfully so:

• Physician burnout has been characterized as a public health crisis for years
• Given the negative effects of burnout on safety, quality, medical errors and physician's mental health ... it is clear that unrecognized burnout kills patients and doctors
• The prevalence of burnout is staggering here in the age of EMR - over 50% in many studies
• And the majority of healthcare organizations who employ doctors make no meaningful investment in physician wellbeing. Lip service is rampant, but significant FTE and dollars for burnout prevention are exceedingly rare.

Sooner or later, someone was bound to shout, "there should be a law about this." That non-specific call for action happened here back in July.

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WellMDWorks 3-Step Process is at This Link
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Let's take it up a notch

Now we have specific calls for specific carrots and sticks from a bona fide legal scholar.

Sharona Hoffman, , JD, LLM, SJD; Professor of Law and Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, has written an editorial in the latest Hastings Center Report

Why is it so darn difficult for people to see you are a good doctor these days?

We both know you are a good doctor. When it comes to diagnosing and treating your patient's diseases and chief complaints, you do a great job. None of us devoted our 20's to med school and residency to be a crappy doctor, right? 

So why is it so hard for the patients to see that when they are filling out their patient satisfaction surveys?

Why is there such a disparity between your efforts to offer the best medical care and their Press Ganey scores??

ARRRGGHH...

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It takes a while for most physicians to understand the source of this double standard. That is why this whole topic of patient satisfaction is a core cause of physician burnout.

Sooner or later all of us must admit ...
When it comes to the cursed gap between the quality of your Practice of Clinical Medicine and your Patient Satisfaction scores ... 

Your patients can't tell a good doctor from a bad one.

The adoption of the Electronic Medical Record is a clear and obvious cause of physician burnout.

This new study provides three new data points for both providers and healthcare leaders:

• Evidence of a dose response curve between EMR exposure and physician burnout
• Objective measurements of EMR usability compared to other unpopular software programs.
• And an actual letter grade from physicians for EMRs as a group.
  (No surprise here - EMR gets a big fat "F") 

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This is all an avoidable tragedy
EMR should have never been a major burnout cause 
It should have been a simple staffing issue
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We consider this paper a MUST READ for all C-Suite Healthcare leaders, Chief Wellness Officers and Wellness Champions

We read the study so you don't have to!
Highlights and commentary below --

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This is Blog Post #313
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Study Highlights

"Everybody is a Genius.
But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid"

~ Albert Einstein (?)

The first time I saw this quote two things became clear to me in a flash.

• The logic behind the quote is undeniable
• AND the author is obviously talking about physicians and the Electronic Medical Record

Every week I talk with CMO's and other senior physician leaders who simply cannot understand why some of their doctors "struggle to get out of the room,  stay on time,  see a minimum number of patients per day, over-charting" and more. 

And every week we meet hard working doctors who are haunted by the simple doubts, "what is wrong with me that I can't get my charts done?" and with the next breath, "I'm not sure how much longer I can keep going like this."

This stand off is smack in the middle of a gaping blind spot we see in nearly every healthcare organization. 

Practicing Medicine
and Data Entry into an Electronic Medical Record
are two separate skill sets
(And one of them is WAAAY more important than the other)

QUESTION:
Is it actually some sort of inscrutable riddle, a conundrum, a freaking MYSTERY why doctors struggle with the Electronic Medical Record and other digital forms of overload??

The answer is simple:

Many leaders are judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree

Forceful patient requests for antibiotics in an obvious viral URI are some of the most difficult conversations for any doctor to handle.

• On one side - the patient is miserable
• On the other side - the diagnosis is simple and quick and the treatment is crystal clear

Yet, in many cases, we physicians can be persuaded to prescribe against our better judgement. 

• Where does this common patient-doctor conflict originate?
• Who can shed light on the awesome persuasive power supplied to our patients by a simple rhinovirus?

I nominate Ogden Nash.

Read his poem below and remember your last doozy of a head cold. I nominate these sentiments, rarely spoken in the course of your office visit, as the source of the arm twisting power of your sniffling, suffering patient's argument for antibiotics.

Enjoy ... 

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This is Blog Post #311
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"Common Cold"
by Ogden Nash

There is plenty of evidence that Physician Burnout has a negative effect on a doctor's quality of care

Make's sense, right?

If you are a physician who is

• exhausted
• cynical and sarcastic
• and doubting that your work is making a difference

- BTW, these are the three cardinal symptoms of burnout - 
If that is the way you are feeling today at work, you care clearly not on your "A" Game as a clinician and healer ... right? Oh yes, and in the average healthcare workplace, 50% of the doctors are suffering from at least one symptom of burnout on each practice day.

The Training and Support to become an Effective Physician Wellness Champion

Our 2020 dates are set for both Spring and Fall deliveries of the Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat. Check your schedule now to see which date works for you.  

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If you are being called to lead the Physician Wellness movement, this unique training and comprehensive support system are keys to your effectiveness.

Physician Burnout - Defeat the Whirlwind Today

The universal experience of working with patients is one of OVERWHELM. No matter where you are on the care team; physician, APP, MA, Nurse, Reception - you are attacked from all sides the minute you walk into your practice in a literal tornado of stuff coming your way.

Some of it makes sense, much of it does not and all of it saps your energy and dominates your life ... if you let it.

The WhirlWind will WIN this battle if you don't take some time to build your life balance/burnout prevention strategy. Once you recognize the hypnotic power of the whirlwind and understand you can win this battle ... the next steps are not complicated.

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This is Blog Post #308
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It can be as simple as this ...

Sit down with your family and decide just one thing you want to change or one target you want to hit in the next 4 months.

What is one thing you want to ... 
- Stop Doing
- OR Start Doing
- OR one thing you want to plan/experience/check off your list
In the next 120 days????

THEN TYPE IT IN HERE and let us (and fist bump baby) Help You Make it Happen.

The fun part here is: your one thing doesn't even have to be about work.

What's your One Thing?

Get the Tools & Support to Help Lead the Physician Wellness Movement
Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat
Full Details at This Link
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Feels like we have reached a tipping point in the debate about addressing our modern physician burnout epidemic.

People are running out of patience with the healthcare industry ... and appropriately so.

For the last five years physician burnout rates have hovered around 50% and the industry has responded in its usual academic fashion. Task Forces and Action Collaboratives have been organized, position papers and intellectual models published and a flurry of research into one prevention tool at a time is in the pipeline. They are struggling to "solve" what they think is a "problem" and missing the true nature of burnout in the process. The deck chairs have simply been rearranged.

... All while the whirlwind of your practice day slowly intensifies beyond your capacity to cope. 

But something has changed very recently. Here's what I have noticed just in the last month or so on the internet ...

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This is Blog Post #307
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For the first time I am seeing mainstream articles calling for two new approaches to the burnout swamping our people in the front lines.

• New Government Regulation - as if we didn't have enough regulation already
  
  
• A Physician's Union to enable collective bargaining with "the man"
  
  

It is as if a certain slice of the general public and the physicians of America have given up on our healthcare industry taking care of its own issues any time soon. 

I have a quick question for you ...