Medicalizing Physician Burnout Misses the Real Problem

We’ve primarily tried to address the physician burnout crisis with the very systems that created it.

We’ve responded with dashboards, committees, policies, and programs.

Most of what’s been offered feels, and often is, performative.

Much of it feels more about optics than true change.

Physician suicide rates have grown. Increasingly, physicians, especially women, are leaving clinical medicine.

If you'd like to read more about my thoughts on this topic, please check out my recent Kevin MD article, "Medicalizing Burnout Misses the Real Problem."

Burnout is a predictable outcome of a culture built on over-responsibility, perfectionism, and silent suffering.

We need to create a healthy environment where physicians are encouraged to rest, connect, nourish, and lead.

A culture where physician wellness is not an initiative, but a way of being.

How do we get there?

This is the catch-22. We get there with the efforts, experience, and shared wisdom of healthy and well physicians.​

This is why physician coaching, and especially training physicians to lead with a "lens to wellness”, is the next critical step.

Mindfulness, coaching, and stress management tools help us navigate with more grace.

They, not surveys and dashboards, are how we change the system.

"Well" physicians are not only more engaged and compassionate—they are the most powerful force we have to change the system.

When we are well, we can lead well.

When we lead well, medicine can begin to remember what it is supposed to be.

Physicians are the only ones who can change the culture.

We are also the only ones who care enough and know enough about the intricacies to repair it "well."

That is what coaching, mindfulness, and all the things you learn when you work with me help you do.

They help us recognize that we are the ones who continue to perpetuate, often unknowingly, harmful patterns of thought and behavior that harm both the health of medicine and our colleagues.

They help us develop the tools we need to change ourselves and the culture around us.

They help us advocate well and move forward with intention rather than reactivity.

If you want to be a part of the solution, or you simply want to practice medicine without being part of the collective and competitive suffering culture,

​Work with me, find out more about coaching, join me for a retreat (or arrange one for your group), or hire me to speak.