Please wait...

Category: January 2019

Physician burnout doesn’t just impact the physician — their patients, family, and careers are all at risk as well. To kick off the new year, we asked our members what they have done personally to protect themselves from physician burnout, as well as what their colleagues have done to help the team and themselves.

Patient Safety Scenario #8: Leadership

This essay is the eighth installment of the monthly Patient Safety essays, produced by the Patient Safety Subcommittee of the Ethics and Professionalism Committee. The essays are written in the spirit of the aviation industry’s “Black Box Thinking” in order to inform and improve our medical safety record. To read earlier essays and learn how to […]

Read more

Feeling Burned Out

By Joshua M. Adkinson, MD If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would have to worry about burnout, I would have laughed. “Despite the complications, middle of the night emergencies, flap take-backs, and abundant paperwork, I love my job and feel blessed to have the opportunity to help my patients and teach a […]

Read more

Goal for 2019: Achieve Perfect Work-Life Balance

By Kelly L. Babineaux, MD For the past five years, I have been the sole hand surgeon in the Division of Plastic Surgery at an academic, level 1 trauma center.  The ER hand call commitment was every other day and every other weekend.  Over time, this intense call schedule took a toll on me and […]

Read more

Mindfulness is Essential

By Brian Drolet, MD I’ve found that burnout has several sources, and I try to have a strategy for mitigating each.  First, I strive to maintain balance, which I believe is the foundation of well-being. Every physician knows there are many demands on our time, to the point it sometimes seems there is no way […]

Read more

How to Enjoy the Ride

By John S. Gaul, MD Despite increased recognition of physician burnout, the goal of achieving a better “Work-Life” balance is elusive and we often fall short of the ideal. We have learned from the Mayo Clinic study that Orthopedic  surgeons are at very high risk for burnout; of 25 different medical specialties, Orthopedics came in […]

Read more

The Benefit of Teaching

By Charles A. Goldfarb, MD I am fortunate to practice in a large academic center, Washington University School of Medicine. While some may believe that academic medicine — with its expectations for full time clinical care plus research and teaching — leads to increased stress and a higher risk of burnout, I have been supported […]

Read more

About Happy Hand Surgeons, Bicycles, Dinosaurs, and the Dalai Lama

By Sebastian Guenkel, MD Do you experience enough? Are you fulfilled enough? Do you question whether you are enough? What are your expectations? And those of your family, friends, colleagues, and patients? Do you fulfill these expectations? Frankly, I think all of us might have asked ourselves these questions. These might be questions that are […]

Read more

Physician Burnout: Don’t Let it Happen to You!

By Gregory Hanker, MD Life is wonderful!  Make certain that you have time to enjoy it.  As we enter the “golden years,” slow down and eventually retirement looms just over the horizon.  As physicians, we are dedicated to our career and tend to work hard long into our senior years.  But a slowdown will inevitably […]

Read more

Avoiding Burnout

By Jason N. Harvey, MBBS, FRACS Another E-mail asking me to do something. That was the exasperated thought when the request came to write about burnout. “It’s a fishing expedition,” “I don’t have time,” “What would I say,” “I’m not burnt out.” Amongst the internal dialogue was, “I’ve never done anything like that before,” which […]

Read more