Health Care Thoughts: Physician Burnout

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt

Health Care Thoughts: Physician Burnout

During the years I worked every day with physicians I learned a great deal, including about the time pressure, the relentless work flow and the sleep deprivation during physicians’ “on call” days.
A Mayo Clinic (http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1351351) has been published and 50% of physicians are feeling impacts of burnout. Not a surprise to me.

Some of this stress may be alleviated by the trend of physicians becoming hospital employees and hospitalists covering inpatients rather than family practice and internal medicine docs.

Will PPACA crank up the stress? We have high expectations of our physicians and the health system in general, may we have to temper those expectations just a bit?