When the stress of your personal practice whirlwind has your energy balance below zero, it is hard to imagine the future.

And I invite you to focus for a few minutes on the most interesting survey on the nebulous concept of the Future of Healthcare I have ever seen. Fascinating stuff. 

When I talk to doctors and physician leaders about Physician Burnout, they always make the same mistake.

They ask simple questions and expect simple answers when none exist.

Last week Amazon announced you can now "see" a doctor via Alexa.

Customers can connect with Teladoc by saying “Alexa, I want to talk to a doctor.” They’ll get a call back on their device from a Teladoc doctor. The "visit" costs $75 for people without insurance.

My sister Dana is a chef turned EMT and now a Nurse. She made the career move from a desire to make a deeper difference.

She sent me this incredible video today. It is an amazing testimonial to the impact of corporate greed on the lives and careers of nurses and doctors everywhere. Blaming this workforce decimation on COVID and abusive patients is false and deceptive. 

This timeless wisdom from The House of God was quoted to me by a resident on my first ER rotation

I think it applies to the news in all the headlines about the new OMICRON Variant of the COVID-19 virus.

It is 11/28/2021 as I write this. Omicron and the travel and nation-level shutdowns it immediately inspired, have dominated headlines across the world for the last 48 hours. We thought we had Delta in the rear view mirror and now this.

Hang on a second. What is that first step again?

Carpe Diem does not translate to SEIZE the Day 

The word Carpe does not mean snatch or grab or wrestle to the ground and hold on tight. 

This is such an important question that only you can answer.

• You started this journey at the Lightworker's Fork in the Road when you made the extraordinary choice to go to medical school.
  
  
• Survived the 7 - 16 years of the medical education process.
  
  
• Have practiced the craft of a helper and healer to the best of your ability, despite EMR and all the other distractions of the Whirlwind of your practice.

Yet, when it comes to the final chapter of a physician's life, most of us play a perpetual game of "kick the can down the road". With 45% of US Physicians age 55 and older - a total of nearly 420,000 doctors in all - this should be one of the most common topics of discussion between doctors. We both know it is not!

"the worst U.S. health-care labor crisis in memory"

The Healthcare Staffing Crisis Hit the Front Page at Bloomberg this week.

Here in what we hope are the waning days of the Delta Surge in COVID, there is so much physician stress, burnout and pessimism in the USA.

We talk with hundreds of physicians and physician leaders each week. Starting about a month ago ... despair, true fear about the future of your practice and a clear deer in the headlights quality started to color these conversations - for obvious reasons.

New Resources to Prevent Physician Suicide from a Powerful New Coalition - Please Download and Share

Physician Suicide Awareness Day is September 17th, 2021