‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
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Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#2"Most doctors say it’s the level of paperwork and data input they’ve had to do since medical records went digital".
So before "digital" they didn't fill in as many records?
Checking the main article https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-lifestyle-burnout-de... found:
"All that paperwork sucks all of the enjoyment out of being a doctor." -Family physician
"Fear of litigation, bad reviews, and complaints make everything worse." -Dermatologist
I can change the doctor words for any other profession and still found that any profession can argue the same thing
"All that paperwork sucks all of the enjoyment out of being a teacher / lawyer / policeman." -Family teacher / lawyer / policeman
but being the most common reason (paperwork) and want to kill themselves?
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#3It is a well-known fact that the entire industry under-invests in tech infrastructure. Congress literally paid them to do it using "meaningful use" incentives as part of the ACA, and still can't get them to invest more. Ask yourself who has better front-office CRM: your local car dealership or your doctor?
Do you think the audo dealership does it because they like spending money? No, it's because they compete and are paid based on quality of customer service, and believe (rightly) that keeping good customer records is an important part of that.
No such incentives exist in the medical industry. Everything is just "how many procedures can you do per hour". Since the industry doesn't encourage good record-keeping, it's seen as a "chore" doctors don't like doing and hence hate doing it, and try to do it as quickly as possible, before they can get back to "making money" doing hip and knee surgery, seeing more patients, etc.
The solution is really pretty simple: there needs to be meaningful competition on the (patient-perceived) quality of care. Our current insurance-driven system doesn't promote that at all. Handing customers cash, whether from employers, the government, whoever, and letting them spend it, gets the incentives a lot closer to right.
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#4"Most doctors say it’s the level of paperwork and data input they’ve had to do since medical records went digital". So before "digital" they didn't fill in as many records? Checking the main article https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-lifestyle-burnout-de... found: "All that paperwork sucks all of the enjoyment out of being a doctor." -Family physician "Fear of litigation, bad reviews, and complaints make everyth…
It doesn't actually say anywhere that they want to kill themselves except for the title. This is bad article. That being said it seems to be implying their depression is higher, stress is higher, and satisfaction is lower. I think the reason could be that they are spending the entire visit collecting data and not really treating or developing a rapport with the patient. I personally feel that most of my doctors visits over the past 10 years have been very impersonal and they were rushing to get me out. This is a stark contrast to the family practitioner I had for 20 years prior who felt like a family member. I actually don't go to the doctors hardly anymore due to bad experiences with them and never feeling like I'm getting adequate care. I'm sure doctors are aware of this and since many got into the profession specifically to help people I'm sure it takes a toll on them psychologically when they feel they can't do their job. The solution to this is more automated data collection IMO.
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#5> Nazario says that while burnout is common among workers, for doctors, it can seem worse because all the schooling and training they’ve undergone can feel like a waste when most of their day is spent typing codes into their medical software.
> “It’s almost like being a cog in a wheel, where they’re going through the motions of what’s necessary, not necessarily using all the knowledge that she or he has gained in the years of training,” Nazario says.
Sounds a whole lot like software engineering. I am guessing that this is how many people with specialized skill sets feel once they've maintained a job utilizing that skill set for some length of time.
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#6"Most doctors say it’s the level of paperwork and data input they’ve had to do since medical records went digital". So before "digital" they didn't fill in as many records? Checking the main article https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-lifestyle-burnout-de... found: "All that paperwork sucks all of the enjoyment out of being a doctor." -Family physician "Fear of litigation, bad reviews, and complaints make everyth…
I can't / won't argue the point in detail for every profession, but would wager from personal observation that what doctors have experienced with EMR systems is immensely worse. There might be some good systems out there but what I've seen is a Kafka-esque UX nightmare that the doctors can't say "no thanks" to unless they own their own practice, which is being made harder in part because of all the red tape (digital & otherwise)
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#7> Nazario says that while burnout is common among workers, for doctors, it can seem worse because all the schooling and training they’ve undergone can feel like a waste when most of their day is spent typing codes into their medical software. > “It’s almost like being a cog in a wheel, where they’re going through the motions of what’s necessary, not necessarily using all the knowledge that she or he has gained in the…
Software engineering has nothing like the licensing and education requirements medicine does. You do not have to spend seven post-grad years to become a software engineer, or take out four years of post-grad loans.
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#8> Nazario says that while burnout is common among workers, for doctors, it can seem worse because all the schooling and training they’ve undergone can feel like a waste when most of their day is spent typing codes into their medical software. > “It’s almost like being a cog in a wheel, where they’re going through the motions of what’s necessary, not necessarily using all the knowledge that she or he has gained in the…
it's worse in the sense of: imagine you are primarily evaluated on adherence to an unintuitive and complex style guide plus some dumb metric like "lines of code added", and your pay can be withheld temporarily or permanently (for a given year) if you don't meet your targets
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#9"Most doctors say it’s the level of paperwork and data input they’ve had to do since medical records went digital". So before "digital" they didn't fill in as many records? Checking the main article https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-lifestyle-burnout-de... found: "All that paperwork sucks all of the enjoyment out of being a doctor." -Family physician "Fear of litigation, bad reviews, and complaints make everyth…
I can't / won't argue the point in detail for every profession, but would wager from personal observation that what doctors have experienced with EMR systems is immensely worse. There might be some good systems out there but what I've seen is a Kafka-esque UX nightmare that the doctors can't say "no thanks" to unless they own their own practice, which is being made harder in part because of all the red tape (digital…
Here's the article on why doctor's hate their computers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381969. It's a UX nightmare or revenge on the ancillaries.
Re: ‘Alarming’ burnout is making doctors want to kill themselves
#10One painful thing is that most people entering med school don't viscerally understand how long, painful, and expensive the process is, or how much better some of the alternatives can be: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-n...