How Burnout Is Plaguing Doctors and Harming Patients

Burnout rates exceed 50 percent for many fields of medicine

The presidential symposium at this year’s annual meeting of the Child Neurology Society of America in early October in Kansas City raised many eyebrows: The first presentation focused on burnout rates among neurologists around the country.

Many of my colleagues felt that this was an inappropriate choice, especially with so many trainees and young-child neurologists in the audience. Typically, the presidential symposium at a conference of such eminence addresses an issue of scientific importance. But some other colleagues felt that this discussion was essential, and that the elephant in the room cannot be ignored anymore.

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Healthcare Administrative support to core care deliverty

Jay is 100% correct. The last paragraph of this article is the doorway to the next important conversation.

This discussion is not only germane to clinical health. Scientific and medical curriculae do not have enough hours in their semester programs to include training on how to apply the science effectively for our patients and other stakeholders.

The handoff from scientific or clinical activity into the everyday world of the patient or customer is still awkward. The clinician is forced to make a huge mental jump from the detail of the patient situation to the administrative processes that capture the results for the next phase of patient care or scientific discovery/documentation.

This is not unusual; it is apparently uncomfortable enough to cause frustration to the point of burn out, based on Dr. Desai's comments.

Our quality community understands process and the interfaces between processes well enough to continue this conversation toward more effective ways to hand off more smoothly from science to application into the world of business.