"Burnout is Everywhere."

“Burnout is everywhere. So are burnout coaches.”

This was said to me recently by an Associate Director of Physician Wellness at a large

and well-respected institution in Midwest America.

There is a lot to digest within these two sentences. How is it that we’ve arrived at the

point in medicine wherein burnout IS, in fact, everywhere? And if burnout is

everywhere, and if there are a plethora of burnout coaches, then why is the rate of

physician burnout only increasing?

I often wonder if a Coach could have helped me off the edge of the cliff, way back

several years ago when I was crumbling. What I wanted when I was in the middle of it

all was someone to share in my outrage and my frustration. I didn’t necessarily want to

let go of either of those things, because to do so implied acquiescence, caving in, giving

up, and worst of all, compromising everything I believed in.

The downfall of medicine began when we started applying only business models and

mindsets to provision of care and healing, and that business thinking and marketing has

only gotten more pervasive. Toward the end of my practicing career, I walked into my

dialysis unit one morning and was greeted by a brand -new oak rocking chair, large,

with a sign attached that read, “Please don’t sit here.” The purpose of the chair? To

promote home dialysis therapies. And there was one rocking chair placed in EVERY

dialysis unit owned by this multibillion-dollar international dialysis corporation in the

United States. My outrage and frustration were loudly expressed but got me nowhere. I

was Sisyphus, rolling an impossibly large stone that would only crush me. The fight

was just too large, the foe just too great.

What I didn’t realize then as those frustrations and that outrage continued to grow was

that while the external forces were too great, I would have been better served by

managing my own internal forces: my negative thinking, my negative self-talk, my

notions of feeling completely trapped and helpless, devoid of any joy in the work that

was once my passion.

I didn’t know then that my own neural plasticity is my greatest superpower. I had little

awareness of the subconscious negative thought patterns that existed as a super-

highway in my brain, built so efficiently that those negative thought patterns became

core beliefs about my Self, about my circumstance, and they were never questioned.

They were simply true. And those beliefs infiltrated my day-to-day practice life, skewing

my interpretations of everything around me, from administrative decisions to colleagues’

clinical choices. What I did not understand then is that I had never been powerless to

change those thought patterns, and to change those emotions. In fact, I held all the

power.

We all know the most common reasons that physicians are leaving bedside care in

droves. The System isn’t yet ready to listen and to adapt and to return to some middle

ground where patient satisfaction isn’t more important than a healthy physician staff,

and where those same physicians who are charged with maintaining life and limb are

paid a salary commensurate with that responsibility and senior leadership isn’t making

millions in bonuses. That shift may take another generation, more’s the pity.

What we all can do, however, is look toward more creative and science-based ways to

alter and re-adjust our own mindsets. I know this doesn’t fix anyone’s day-to-day

systemic practice issues now, but I do know that living inside of “light” energy, energy

that is animating, sustaining, renewable, vast, is far more likely to provide cognitive

openings. Such a shift will help us all see our ways clear, as a collective body, to impact

meaningful change in The System that is compromising us and endangering our

patients. In fact, I would argue that changing our individual thinking is the ONLY way

toward sustained systemic change. To proceed fueled by the anger, frustration, and

outrage I was living in and expect to persuade others toward new ideas is fraught. Dark

energy induces more dark energy. But light energy? That’s a powerful contagion.

Burnout coaches might be everywhere, but their methods don’t appear to be staving off

the burnout. I wonder what negative thoughts you might be aware of in this moment,

and be capable of changing within the next 15 minutes, with my help? How about we

tap into YOUR superpowers?

Jenie