Physician Burnout Has Reached Distressing Levels, New Research Finds (nytimes.com) 68
Ten years of data from a nationwide survey of physicians confirm another trend that's worsened through the pandemic: Burnout rates among doctors in the United States, which were already high a decade ago, have risen to alarming levels. From a report: Results released this month and published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a peer-reviewed journal, show that 63 percent of physicians surveyed reported at least one symptom of burnout at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, an increase from 44 percent in 2017 and 46 percent in 2011. Only 30 percent felt satisfied with their work-life balance, compared with 43 percent five years earlier. "This is the biggest increase of emotional exhaustion that I've ever seen, anywhere in the literature," said Bryan Sexton, the director of Duke University's Center for Healthcare Safety and Quality, who was not involved in the survey efforts. The most recent numbers also compare starkly with data from 2020, when the survey was run during the early stages of the pandemic. Then, 38 percent of doctors surveyed reported one or more symptoms of burnout while 46 percent were satisfied with their work-life balance.
Tech (Score:2)
That is nothing, now do Tech workers.
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> now do Tech workers.
With or without lube?
Just kidding, procurement said lube was an unnecessary company expense.
Bummer they cannot work from home. (Score:2)
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Not all work is equal though. The hardest job a person can have is a stay at home mom. Follow the science.
https://www.romper.com/p/stay-... [romper.com]
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Privatization (Score:5, Interesting)
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Which is a complete non sequitur. Private health care won't magically create more physicians and health care workers.
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The problem is that In Canada all the competent doctors just leave to work in America.
Privatization can create better working environments that can better retain talent, which will logically encourage more people to get into the field.
The problem with a enforced monopoly is that if you screw up, every hospital in the entire country starts losing talent. To some extent you protect yourself by forcing the Doctors to leave the country to find better working conditions, but being a high demand field, this is no
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Our system is already pretty privatized. The government only exists as a funding source. Doctor's offices, Clinics, and Hospitals are all private entities (or not-for-profit entities) who bill the government on a fixed schedule. The only change we'd need to make is who gets the bill.
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In BC, the hospitals are all some sort of Not-for-profit entity. Maybe they're still a crown corp, but the province doesn't actually administrate them. They have Boards of Directors to actually do the work with C-level, P-level, and V-Level suites.
Re: Privatization (Score:2)
Yeah no. The province directly runs all hospitals. And while doctors offices are private, they only get paid what the province chooses to pay them. There are a couple of private hospitals left in Ontario I think that got grandfathered in when the medical system was socialized.
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Really? I haven't heard anybody say that.
Well, not quite true... my mother asked me what I thought about permitting privatization of medical procedures and clinics, as my 80 year old uncle needs a hip replacement, and there's no end in sight for the waiting... I replied that it's an excellent way to reserve quality health care for the affluent. The poor would get the medical equivalent of legal's "public defender".
Re: Privatization (Score:3)
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It just means that the people who run America have decided that it is not in their best interests.
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Just because America is shit at supplying public services like health care and department of motor vehicles services, doesn't mean those services cannot be supplied well. It just means that the people who run America have decided that it is not in their best interests.
Yes, yes, and communism can work perfectly well, in theory. Just watch a Star Trek movie!
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Yes, yes, and communism can work perfectly well, in theory. Just watch a Star Trek movie!
So you're seriously arguing that because America can't do it no-one can?
If you guys ever traveled to any other country your minds would explode.
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Yes, yes, and communism can work perfectly well, in theory. Just watch a Star Trek movie!
So you're seriously arguing that because America can't do it no-one can?
If you guys ever traveled to any other country your minds would explode.
Okay, where exactly do I travel for that head-explosion caused by seeing a working example of communism?
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Re: Privatization (Score:2)
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We also put a great deal of effort into overall economic productivity.
Why are you all so poor then?
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Really? I haven't heard anybody say that.
Well, not quite true... my mother asked me what I thought about permitting privatization of medical procedures and clinics, as my 80 year old uncle needs a hip replacement, and there's no end in sight for the waiting... I replied that it's an excellent way to reserve quality health care for the affluent. The poor would get the medical equivalent of legal's "public defender".
Meanwhile now everyone gets it. I'm happy being miserable, as long as that evil rich fart is just as miserable as I am, right?
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Nationalization (or privatization) wouldn't help. The issue is really that doctor training is controlled by a cartel so rather than having more doctors, they have to pay fewer doctors shitloads of money to make them work ridiculous hours.
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THIS.
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My mother in law lives in Canada and voted conservative all her life. She recently had to spend a few days in the local hospital. She was totally shocked at how under staffed the place was and how bad the food had become. The ER now closes at 6pm so god help you if something bad happens you're driving an hour away to the bigger hospital. She's no longer voting conservative after witnessing first hand the consequences.
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There is a growing mode of thought that the Conservatives are purposefully starving the healthcare system and making it bad so that their rich friends can come in and make money with private companies.
Yeah and it's true. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
https://www.thehoser.ca/posts/... [thehoser.ca]
Seems partially self-imposed to me? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not in the medical field but I have friends who are. One problem I've seen repeatedly is that medical doctors generally have high expectations about the income they should be earning/deserve to earn. They really can't hit those numbers without scheduling patients back-to-back, all day long, every single day of the week.
This results in patient frustration when they feel like their doctor isn't willing to spend enough time listening to them and talking with them casually, and when they're stuck in waiting rooms for appointments made MONTHS prior, all because the doctor over-booked appointments and just wasn't able to get to them on time.
Obviously, this is also going to burn the doctor out after a while.
I know many will say, "But we HAVE to run things this way! I've got massive student loan debts to pay off for med school, and malpractice insurance costs are sky high, and so many expenses for my staff, etc. etc. etc." Yep, kind of like the massive debt people go into when they start their own company from scratch and see that it's probably not even going to turn a profit for several years. It's no proverbial picnic, but seems like a good, respectable career to be in for the long haul if you can set your expectations of income reasonably and arrange it so you truly love what you do.
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A doctor should have the option of a good middle class income and a lighter work load. Next door to me a fully fund
Re:Seems partially self-imposed to me? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not in the medical field but I have friends who are. One problem I've seen repeatedly is that medical doctors generally have high expectations about the income they should be earning/deserve to earn. They really can't hit those numbers without scheduling patients back-to-back, all day long, every single day of the week.
This results in patient frustration when they feel like their doctor isn't willing to spend enough time listening to them and talking with them casually, and when they're stuck in waiting rooms for appointments made MONTHS prior, all because the doctor over-booked appointments and just wasn't able to get to them on time.
I'm not sure the problem is expectation as much as incentives. If your employer paid you $X/hr regardless of how many hours you worked I'm guessing you'd go quite a bit over 40/week.
The question you should be asking is why those patients don't go to a doctor who will spend more time with them, the answer is that there aren't enough of them.
It's not a physician greed issue, it's a physician supply issue. There's more patients looking to see doctors than there are doctors to see them. One solution should probably be more Nurse practitioners. A larger pool of people who can actually take time to answer patient questions and write some prescriptions and saving actual doctors for the more complicated cases. Or simply training more doctors.
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Here's the kicker: we in the US aren't going broke spending money on doctors. They represent only around 14% of US health care expenditures.
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Obviously. Same in other fields. The main problem causing burnout is self-exploitation. Of course the culture in different fields also plays a role, but I see this as one of the primary reasons why so many people re-evaluated their life-choices during the pandemic.
For tech, I would not really recommend anybody to go into it these days except if it really captures their interest and they are good enough to make it work as a part-time job.
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I'm not in the medical field but I have friends who are. One problem I've seen repeatedly is that medical doctors generally have high expectations about the income they should be earning/deserve to earn. They really can't hit those numbers without scheduling patients back-to-back, all day long, every single day of the week.
What physicians are *you* going to?!
I've had trouble finding a physcian because they all have terrible hours - Mondays, 1-1:07, Tuesdays 5AM-8:30AM (unless it's a waxing gibbous moon, then it's 5PM-8:30PM), Wednesdays the office is closed, Thursday is 9-5, Fridays are 11-3 with a break for lunch between 12 and 2, and Saturday 9-10:27, with an extra hour between 3PM and 4PM if the day is prime. Closed for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Ramadan, Rosh Hashannah, Arbor Day, and any time the FedEx guy tests positive f
Thus, the Third-Worlding of Medicine (Score:2)
In virtually every hospital or medical center I go to, the vast majority of newer doctors on staff are imports from the Third World, mainly Africa and Central Asia (especially Pakistan or India), and most of them did their medical school in their home countries, not in American medical schools. For all of the crap, stress, and expense that it takes to become a doctor in the US, native-born med school grads are going straight into high-paying specialties instead of emergency rooms and general practice. Many
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I used to go to Thailand for a general physical at a hospital there... it was a great experience: three hours total time, including stress test, ekg, abdomenal ultrasound, chest x-ray, urine, stool, and blood samples, and whatever else, along with a doctor's consultation. If you needed to see a specialist, it was in the same building and you would see them within an hour. Great experience for about $500. Now it is closer to $3,000 and less (medically) efficacious. The doctors made good money-- better th
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Caribbean Diploma Mills, cranking out graduates from India and other places hand over fist. My last primary physician was one of those, and because he wouldn't osculate he missed a rather serious thing that I had to go under the knife for in a rather urgent (but not emergent) manner. When it became obvious to me, the medical muggle, there was a problem, only then did he "get it."
Can't remember the last time I had a "Smith" or "Jones" for a physician. They don't exist anymore.
Oh and that physician that m
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Medicine's broken, and has been since Billary stuck her craw in it back in the 90's.
As a non- American I find it hilarious that you think that is the problem with your healthcare.
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Medicine's broken, and has been since Billary stuck her craw in it back in the 90's.
As a non- American I find it hilarious that you think that is the problem with your healthcare.
And yet in another thread, a Canadian said they're having the same issues. So it's not like a nationalized system prevents this stuff either.
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I'd accept c
Epic, Pre-Auths (Score:2)
Is it Epic?
Or Pre-Auths?
Both turn highly trained people skilled at healthcare into either:
(1) frustrated choice pickers bombarded with a UI that bears no resemblance to practicing complex medicine
(2) poor uncompensated bastards on hold only to be told 'NO' by a minimum wage insurance company call center.
I'd be more sympathetic if... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, the pandemic has been a nightmare for many doctors. But, I'd be more sympathetic if the medical community had a more reasonable system for increasing the number of working doctors. Think about this -- in the US, how long has it been since we've had a shortage of doctors in rural areas? Pretty much forever and we still can't solve the problem? The reason, at least in part, is the American Medical Association has kept a tight cap on residencies.
It's not like there aren't a lot of people who'd like to be doctors. Indeed, something like 75% of undergraduates start off as premed. The AMA is essentially a union for doctors and they've kept supply of physicians tight to keep salaries up. A friend's daughter started her first physician job a few years ago for $250K/yr, working four days/week. I think she's making something like $400K a few years in and she's totally burnt out. So yeah, they paid a shitload of dough and they have to work their asses off.
Doctors say they need to make a lot in order to pay medical school loans. There are solutions for this too. Why not run medical school like graduate school? Have doctors in training work as orderlies in hospitals, etc. while they're in school, just like grad students teach and work as research assistants. Sure, it'd take them a few years longer but they could come out debt-free and maybe a bit more humble.
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Well, let's see. Large parts of the population:
- dismiss the opinions of the educated out of hand, and specifically sometimes because they're educated
- diagnose themselves because they think they can google themselves into being better
- move from superfood to superfood, and naturopathy to homeopathy convinced of everything based on nothing
- refuse vaccinations , sometimes through fear (understandable), but often through willful stupidity and the desire to align to the contrarian group
- sue the fuck out of
It's NOT the Pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
It's,
The bloody HMOs/Big Business/Insurance Co.s/Big Pharma. They are driving everyone crazy.
Why?
Because nothing can get done without a gazillion pointy-headed accountants looking over the shoulders of every doctor's decision.
Doctors have basically become rubber stamps doing the bidding of their "bosses." Is there any wonder personalized medical care no longer exists?
I certainly wouldn't go the extra mile if everything I trued to do for my patients was being over-ruled by a nameless conglomerate who certainly doesn't care about anyone.
15 min per patient (Score:2)
The new "industry standard" for a dr. visit is 15 minutes per patient, including intake, processing, actual visit with the dr, any locally collected labs and check out. This is down from 20 min which was still the standard a few years ago. At the same time, large physicial groups/medical organizations constantly rate practices and staff based on the user feedback (those questionnaires you get post visit) rather than healthcare outcomes. The result is very much expected.
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Correct, but if you look at the billing, they claim they spent 30 mins.
Self-inflicted harm (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell are doctors and nurses working themselves through 24 and 48 hour stints? I mean that's insane. I get it if one surgery takes a crazy amount of time, but if they're seeing multiple patients and not sleeping, how is that a good idea?
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It is not. It is a broken work-culture. If you do that as an engineer, you usually will get fired because your rate and cost of mistakes made will go through the roof. The same is true about the rate of mistakes for the medical field, but there the root-causes are not so easy to identify and hence the bad practices continue.
Drive them out? Do without. (Score:2)
Wow. I googled that phrase. "drive them out, do without" - and... "did not match any documents"!
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In fact I'd bet money on it.
Cost of resistribution (Score:1)
When I was a kid, I lived in a town in middle America that had a small hospital and several doctors. Each doctor had his own private practice (generally an office with a waiting room, exam room, records room and a place for a secretary). The only workers were the doc and the secretary, who usually was also a nurse. In the case of my family's doc, the nurse/secretary was the doc's wife. When you were in the hospital, your doc went there to treat you, and if you were sick at home, the doc would come to your h
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What does it cost you when Bob doesn't get timely medical treatment? What does it cost you when Bob can't work because he was terrified of the costs he'd incur by going to the doctor?
In Norway, we don't pay Bob's health costs to be nice. We pay them so we don't have to pay 10 times as much later on. Even with the dollar going berserk and the krone tanking, we still live in a house that counts as financially high class. When I get sick,
Lower the entry barrier for biotech (Score:2)
Sure, it's for our own safety. We don't want a person packing a bit too much down there getting on the plane, if they get excited it could puncture a hole in the roof of the plane.
But that pornographier (we can call it a nudey machine instead) is capable of looking inside the human body. It's basically a camera. We built this machine to violate the personal
Entitled snowflakes (Score:2)
Doctors are the most entitled snowflakes in the US. If they don't like working for hospitals with suits bossing over them, go and hang out a shingle and run the practice the way you like. You don't even need to use electronic health records -- you will simply be docked like 2% or something like that.
Most doctors nowadays treat patients like cattle, and can hardly even talk to them, but oh, they are so oppressed. Is there anyone in this country who is not a victim? Now docs, the millionaire snowflakes, w