A new insight about physician burnout. Some factors such as increased patient volume, administrative bureaucracy, profit driven coroporate medicine are now only a part of a worldwide increase in chronic diseases.
The increase in chronic disease can be attributed to the elimination of diseases which end life in young, or middle-age.
The Paradox Of Clinician Burnout In America
Doctors and nurses today are the beneficiaries of groundbreaking advancements in science, technology and disease treatments. With so many sophisticated tools available to diagnose and cure patient problems, you’d think this would be the golden era of clinician fulfillment. And yet, this period of radical advancement is marked by growing dissatisfaction and an exodus of physicians. Last year alone, 71,309 doctors quit the profession.
At a press briefing last month, Dr. Debra Houry, Chief Medical Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, highlighted this growing threat to healthcare professionals.
“Burnout among these workers has reached crisis levels,” she said, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic had intensified long-standing challenges within the workforce. Fatigue, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders and suicidal thoughts are on the rise, according to the CDC.
In self-reported surveys about the causes of burnout, medical professionals point to the profit-centric American healthcare system that burdens them with countless bureaucratic tasks, endless prior authorization requirements, and a revolving door of patient visits.
All these complaints are valid, but new data on burnout from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund raise another possibility and shed light on a potential solution.
Burnout: A Distinctly American Problem?
If the main drivers of burnout were indeed greedy insurance execs and a for-profit healthcare system, then you would expect that the Western nations with universal healthcare (which is paid for and provided by the government) would have dramatically lower physician burnout rates than in the United States.
But the Commonwealth Fund report tells a different story. Surprisingly, primary care physicians in the U.S. are in the middle of the pack when it comes to burnout. They report higher rates of satisfaction than their peers in the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (but trail the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Switzerland in satisfaction).
If physician burnout isn’t a distinctly American phenomenon, deriving from unique aspects of the U.S. healthcare system, then what is causing doctor dissatisfaction around the world?
If we look at the biggest change to global medical practice in the 21st century, it’s not the corporatization of care or the administrative burdens heaped on clinicians. It’s the evolution of illness, itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment