In recent weeks and months a number of articles have delved into the issue with a sense of seriousness and purpose that the doctor crisis deserves. Progress on reducing unnecessary pressures on physicians is painfully slow, but the broadest possible recognition of the problem is an important step toward dealing with it effectively.
We hold a basic belief about the future of health care: Solving the doctor crisis is a prerequisite to transforming our delivery system to improve access, equity, quality, and affordability. How can we possibly achieve the overall excellence and affordability in health care if large numbers of doctors are alienated and burned out?
Let’s be very clear: This is not about coddling doctors.
It is about preserving the ideals of the physician as healer and enhancing the professional experience – essential elements to optimizing care for patients and families. It is about acknowledging an honorable profession whose members deserve an environment in which they can serve patients to the best of their ability; an environment in which physicians can aspire to continuous improvement as engaged learners who embrace their role as active members of the Learning Coalition.
Traced Back to Medical School
The problem begins as early as medical school. Richard Gunderman, MD, recently authored an article in the Atlantic arguing that medical students:
are suffering from high rates of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment. College students choose careers in medicine because they care, because people matter to them, and because they want to make a difference. What is happening to the nearly 80,000 U.S. medical students to produce such high rates of burnout?
Dr. Gunderman argues that we “need to understand not only the changes taking place in medicine’s external landscape but the internal transformations taking place in minds and hearts. … In what ways are we bringing out the best elements in their character — courage, compassion, and wisdom — as opposed to merely exacerbating their worst impulses — envy, fear, and destructive competitiveness?”
