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Physician Burnout: Depression And Suicide In Surgeons

I wrote last year in USA Today about the impact of physician burnout. Not only do doctors suffer, but so do their patients.

Burnout starts early in residency, with entering interns having a depression rate of 4 percent, similar to the general public. But after the first year of residency, that number balloons to 25 percent.

Now another study adds fuel to this disturbing trend. A paper published in the Archives of General Surgery looks at the prevalence of physician burnout in surgeons:

In a national survey, one in 16 surgeons reported contemplating suicide, researchers reported.

An increased risk of suicidal ideation was linked to three factors: depression, burnout, and the perception of having made a recent major medical error …

… But only about one in four of those who reported thinking about taking their own lives sought psychiatric or psychologic help.

The rate of suicidal ideation in surgeons, at 6.3 percent, was almost double of that in the general population (3.3 percent).

Physician burnout is a phenomenon that’s often ignored. The practice environment is deteriorating, with increasing time pressures and worsening bureaucratic burdens. Little of this is addressed in the national health conversation, or in the recently passed health reform law. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Physician Visibility In Public: I See Patients, And They See Me

In the movie “The Sixth Sense,” there was that kid who saw dead people. I’m like that. But I see patients and their parents instead. They’re all around me.

They’re watching at the grocery store when my kids act up. We meet during anniversary dinners, at Christmas Eve service, and on the treadmill at the Y. I bump into parents when buying personal effects and even during the early morning coffee run in my oldest sweats. I see patients.

The follow-up dialog between the parents might go something like this:

Dad: “Marge, don’t you think Billy’s colitis might be better managed by a doctor capable of pulling himself together?”

Mom: “Don’t be ridiculous, Frank. DrV’s bedhead has nothing to do with his ability to care for Billy. And besides, I’ve heard that he can intubate the terminal ileum in under 10 minutes.”

It’s not that I necessarily mind being seen in the wild. I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin, even when it’s glistening after a workout. I’m bothered more by the fact that patients may be repulsed by my occasional bedraggled appearance. If I knew they were good with it, I might be less caught up with the whole matter. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

ER Doctors And Burnout

Via Balkans Business News:

One in two emergency care doctors will suffer a burnout during their career, according to a survey of French physicians, published online in Emergency Medicine Journal. The research was funded in part by the NEXT NURSES’ EXIT STUDY (‘Sustaining working ability in the nursing profession – investigation of premature departure from work’) project, which received more than EUR 2 million under the ‘Quality of life and management of living resources’ Programme of the EU’s Fifth Framework Programme (FP5).

The responses showed that the prevalence of burnout was high, with 1 in 2 emergency care doctors identified as suffering from it, compared with more than 4 out of 10 of the representative sample. Physicians had the highest burnout rate in the two age groups, between 35 and 44 and between 45 and 54.

Expectedly, it’s international…

*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*

Physician Lifestyle Is Criteria When Choosing A Medical Specialty

Medical students today consider lifestyle an essential criteria when choosing a specialty. It’s become a cliche that most are looking towards the ROAD (radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology and dermatology) to happiness.

There’s been some recent media attention at how women are lured to specialties that offer a greater balance between their family lifestyle and professional demands. Claudia Golden, a Harvard economics professor, recently noted that,

high-paying careers that offer more help in balancing work and family are the ones that end up luring the largest numbers of women. Surprisingly, colon and rectal surgery is one of these, because of rapid growth in routine colonoscopies that can be scheduled in advance, giving doctors control over their time. Goldin says 31% of colon and rectal surgeons under 35 years of age were female in 2007, compared with only 3% of those ages 55 to 64, and 12% of those ages 45 to 54, reflecting the fact that younger women are flocking to the field.

Of course, what’s not said is the grueling training that it takes to become a colorectal surgeon — but the numbers cited above do not lie. The new generation of doctors — both men and women — want greater control of their time. That means more shift-work and a predictable call schedule. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

A Doctor’s Many Hats

I have taken on the task of writing 50,000 words for a novel in November (NaNoWriMo) and would have to carve time out of work or family [my posts are decreased by this new hat]. I can only wear so many hats.

But I am here, and my writing has been far more enjoyable than I expected. This is the time when it is easy to hit the wall (we get daily encouraging emails from successful writers to get us through this time), but I’m okay so far. I am writing about a doctor who encounters a very unusual patient. I am writing in the first-person, which was a good choice, as I know the first person of a physician intimately and stand no risk of getting those details wrong. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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