The hidden patterns in Physician Wellness

As a physician coach since 2010, I focus on helping physicians build a much better practice and become a much more effective leader.

At this point, I have been extremely fortunate to accumulate 40,000 doctors worth of coaching and training experience since 2010. It has been a rich and rewarding learning experience.

This perspective has revealed clear patterns  -- a set of habits nearly all happy, healthy physicians use to create and maintain that positive state, even in these very difficult times. Without these habits to protect your connection to Purpose as a Lightworker, physician burnout is a constant threat to you and your family. 

This is the latest in a series of posts about these Seven  Habits of Physician Wellbeing.

As working conditions in the front-lines of healthcare continue to deteriorate, you may choose to speak up to your senior leaders.

What can you say to make them take notice and do something about the overwhelm, short staffing, burnout and the digital overload of the average work day?

Do you trust yourself to talk with your CMO about these issues without losing your temper?

Let me show you a power question that actually allows you to see the future of your organization.

I have discussed physician wellness and corporate burnout prevention strategy with nearly 1000 leadership teams since 2010. Here are the strategy and questions I use in these crucial conversations.

The answer to the first question below will give you two important insights:

• Is my practice safe here in the long term?
• Will this organization survive the boomer doctor retirement cliff and still be in business in 2030?
  
  

This is Blog Post #415 - The full library is Here

I launched my website and physician coaching practice back in 2010.

Since then our team has trained and coached over 40,000 doctors to recognize, prevent and recover from burnout.

Along the way, our work has revealed what I believe to be a universal set of habits that create a state of wellbeing and satisfaction in practicing physicians - no matter what your specialty or how many hats you wear at work.

When optimizing physician wellbeing and happiness, it helps to view a doctor's life in four layers: 

LIFE <> CAREER <> PRACTICE <> JOB

Let's look at them one at a time so we can see where the typical block to a physician's happiness lies.

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Just one question and a deep breath can give you the key metric for your personal level of physician wellness.

This question is worded to ask your heart and soul to calculate the balance between ...

• The daily time and energy you devote to your job
• The meaning, purpose and impact those efforts create
• Your level of life balance
• R.O.I. - as in "is this worth all I do - and everything I have done to get here"?

All of this is bundled into the question below:

The fundamental conflict and a proven process for a way forward, in three brief chapters

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Chapter 1

Physician's Search for Meaning

Physicians are Lightworkers

We made a choice long ago to ally our professional career to the forces of Light in the universe ... battling specific forces of Darkness - illness, suffering, death and dying.

Every day an invisible, swirling wall blocks us from helping and healing and making the difference we dreamed of when we went to medical school

We are LIGHTWORKERS in a daily WHIRLWIND and this is the main cause of burnout at the level of heart, soul and spirit.

I reveal and narrate this battle in this 3 Minute Video  

And it just does not have to be this way.

It is a modern epidemic and a plague upon US healthcare. It should wake CEO's up in a cold sweat across the nation every night at 3 AM.

Adversity does not build character ... it reveals it.

In the heat of the pandemic and now in the short staffing crisis that dominates most markets ... physicians, nurses and all front line staff have revealed their character

PhysiciansOnPurpose [ POP ] Podcast #62

In the medical profession, women physicians are automatically assigned a position of inferior status compared to their male colleagues. Women physicians also run into challenges to their status from female nurses on the job site.

Status leveling burden is a set of behaviors all female physicians must perfect in order to up-level their status with regards to these two groups on the practice site. 

1) Male physicians. Men are automatically granted higher status purely virtue of their gender. Women physicians must work to bring themselves up to the level of status and respect of their male colleagues. It takes finesse, practice and effort.

2) Female nurses. There is an additional set of behaviors women physicians must master in order to maintain status with Female Nurses on the practice site. Again, these specific communications and acts of kindness take finesse, practice and additional effort that male physicians need not expend at work.

This was a great discussion for women and men alike with the lead researcher from a new study, Dr. Teresa Cardador PhD. This is a set of behaviors that make it harder for female residents to make it through training and can drive female physicians right out of medicine in some cases. We have all seen them. Now we have a name to aid our discussions of how to respond.