Tag Archives: burnout

MD, MDiv

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I published my first article addressing physician wellness in 2009. Physician wellbeing wasn’t ever part of my academic plan, but over time it became part of my mission. As a Program Director, Dean of Student Affairs, and mentor I watched, and wasn’t always able to help, trainees and colleagues as they struggled. This struggle, which we have (I believe inappropriately) called “burnout” led to weariness, sadness, and distress for almost everyone in my sphere of influence, no matter where they were in their professional journey. 

For some it was career limiting. 

For some it was life limiting

For some it was fatal. 

As physician suicide and burnout in medicine became a reality that couldn’t be ignored, I became part of the movement of healers who began to work with policy makers and hospital administrators to try to make a difference. We worked on ways to convince those in power that this was not just about doing the right thing, but that it helped institutions with their metrics of success since it was clear that physicians in distress affected the bottom line. Despite these efforts, there was rarely any substantial change. In fact, most of us agreed that both objectively and subjectively things were getting worse. I began to realize we weren’t speaking the same language. They were measuring attendance at mandatory wellness training sessions and celebrating “success” because >90% of docs attended. But they weren’t measuring the right thing. They weren’t paying attention to metrics of healer distress, how many of their physicians were quitting their career in medicine, the number of divorces, the rate of substance abuse, or, most tragically, the increasing number of healers who were dying by suicide.

Let me pause here for a minute to state something obvious. I know that policy makers and hospital administrators don’t go to work to make life difficult for the healers in their systems. In fact, I suspect that they are experiencing much of the same distress that we are experiencing because, at its core, the issue here is what we value and how we talk about those values. 

I began to wonder if we needed an entirely new approach. So I went back to graduate school. Most of my friends thought it was crazy that at this stage of a classic academic career, I would go back to school, but I did. I enrolled in the Master of Divinity program at Iliff School of Theology to learn new ways to think about values… and different ways to heal.

I will continue to talk about how to eat well at work because our physical well-being is important. I will also keep writing here (and elsewhere) about staying connected with and for others, because our mental health is also important. But in the weeks and months to come I hope to write more about values and how we might work together, healers and administrators, to heal our patients – and each other. 

Shapiro DE, Duquette C, Abbott LM, Babineau T, Pearl A, Haidet P. Beyond Burnout: A Physician Wellness Hierarchy Designed to Prioritize Interventions at the Systems Level. Am J Med. 2019 May;132(5):556-563. PMID: 30553832.


If you are starting the think you might be depressed, or that your brain is out to kill you, here’s what you do…

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The following is an “unrolled” Twitter feed from Mark Reid, MD on depression.  It’s solid, important advice that I thought should be shared. Dr. Reid  is an internist from Denver, who is very active on Twitter as @medicalaxioms. He is also the author of Medical Axioms, a delightful book of medical wisdom

Interview with Dr. Reid about @medicalaxioms

If you are starting the think you might be depressed, or that your brain is out to kill you, here’s what you do:

1. Find or call your primary care IM of family MD. When you call for an appointment and they ask what for, say “depression.” Notice how the scheduler doesn’t flinch. They get this call 4 times a day!

2. When you get to the doctor, and they ask what’s wrong, just say, “I want you to do those screening tools on me to see if I’m depressed.” Let them do their thing. If they say you’ve got it, let them tell you how meds and counseling work. Let them tell you what they know about pills and which one might help you. Decide together if pills are worth a shot. Tablets really work for some people.

3. You also need a counselor. Ask the MD for a referral. That might work. If not,

4. Go to your insurance and find out their preferred providers for counseling. I suggest you pick someone your same gender. Counterintuitive for some but works better for many.

5.  If that doesn’t work, go in the internet and type in counselor or therapist and the name of your town or city. Read ratings and reviews. Cross reference them with yelp. Look for someone nearby who writes a bio that sounds okay. Figure you’ll see them once a week and it will cost $100. Give them 4 tries. If you don’t feel like you are getting anywhere, ditch them and try again. I’ve seen 3 people in the last 10 years and in retrospect I can rank them.

6. With tablets and shrinks, the trick is resolve. If they aren’t working or give side effects, don’t just quit. Try again. Different shrink. Go back and try a different tablet with your MD.

You can feel better and you are worth it. You deserve it.

There’s lots of other stuff that helps some people: support groups, sobriety, exercise, sleep hygiene, self help books, spiritual practice, ALANON. If your shrink is any good they will recommend this stuff and know something about it.

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To add a few more comments to Dr. Reid’s advice….

  • Depression is a disease, not a failing. You wouldn’t judge yourself for a sprained ankle.  This is the same…. except for one thing.  The disease of depression includes not being able to objectively see what’s going on.  That’s why it’s so important to get started on treatment.
  • If you are a medical student or resident, counseling is available for you and it’s free. The same rules hold, though.  If the first person you see isn’t helping after 3 or 4 visits, it’s ok to make an appointment with someone else.  This is not personal and you don’t have to worry about “hurting their feelings” any other consequences.
  • The National Suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255. You are loved.  You matter.  This is a disease not a failure.  Please seek help.

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Do You Need a Bigger Table?

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“With rare exception, the majority of surgery residents and practicing surgeons who prematurely leave surgery do so because they find the work to be physically, emotionally or spiritually incompatible with the vision they have for their life.” Am J Surg 214:707, 2017

I’ve read a great deal about physician wellness, suffering and burnout and I’ve given (and heard) many talks on the subject. The classic talk on burnout, including some of my early talks, can be summarized as “Exercise more, eat well, pay attention to your family and friends.” I am in no way belittling these things as important, but…. as a good friend said to me the other day “If I have to hear one more lecture on burnout that tells me to add an hour of exercise, an hour to plan and cook my meals and an hour to meditate to my already crazy day, I’m going to shoot myself!”

Not too long ago, a friend recommend I read A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, Hopeful Spiritual Community by John Pavlovitz.  He was in Houston yesterday, and I was able to go hear him speak. John is a Christian pastor, but his words and ideas can be used by everyone, regardless of whether you are religious or not and, if you are, regardless of the faith you hold

John’s idea, which is neither doctrine nor theology, involves creating a “bigger table” in our lives, a table that has the four “legs” of radical hospitality, total authenticity, true diversity, and not having an agenda.

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It’s human nature to surround ourselves with people that are just like us.  But, when we only include people like us in our lives, our potential for growth and happiness is limited as a result. I truly believe that this “small table” mentality contributes to physician suffering and burnout, which means that the idea of building a bigger table may be just what we need.

So, what might a “bigger table” look like for physicians who are struggling with the “why” of their practice?

Radical hospitality. Dr. Francis Peabody famously said that “the care of the patient is in caring for the patient”.  The same holds true for our colleagues, patient families and everyone around us.  If we cultivate an appreciation, even love, for these people – regardless of how difficult they are or how much we disagree with them – we are practicing radical hospitality. As in so many of the gifts we give to others, this is a gift to ourselves, too.

Total authenticity.  We all need a place to be absolutely, completely ourselves… unfiltered, loved, totally accepted.  I’ve always told my trainees that the single most important factor in choosing where you practice is the people you will be joining.  There is no location, salary or title that will ever make up for working with people that don’t let you be truly, authentically you.

True diversity.  This is not just diversity in the sense we are used to hearing about.  In addition to religion, race, gender, age and sexual orientation, true diversity means accepting and listening to people that have totally different views than you.  Ouch.

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During his talk, John told the story of “Sign Guy”.  He was having lunch with a gay teenager when they noticed a man outside the window.  He was carrying a sign that said gay people were an abomination and that they were going to hell.  The young woman asked John “What about ‘sign guy’… how do I invite him to my table?”

We all have “sign guys” in our lives that, like it or not, we should invite to the table in order to have true diversity, but (and this is really important), we have to agree on “table manners” first. Which brings us to the fourth leg of the table…

Agenda free table.  The concept of the bigger table is that we are choosing to sit at the table together because we know the power of listening, the power of really understanding each other. Although we can and should invite everyone to the table, no one should stay who is intentionally trying to change or hurt someone. Being agenda free is one of the non-negotiable “table manners” for all who want to sit at a bigger table.

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So how do I think this translates this into our day to day work?  For a start…

Spending more time learning the stories of our patients… not just “taking their history”.

Working to see administrators and leaders as people who care like we do… not just defending our specific point of view.

Calling out the agendas and implicit biases that keep us from hearing the soft voices of colleagues who are young or discounted for other reasons.

Checking back the next day to be sure that a colleague who said he’s “fine” really is.

Doing all this even though it’s hard, especially when it comes to the “sign guys” in our lives.

I’m sure there are others… what would you add?

 

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 “Grab some wood and some tools, friend. We have work to do.” John Pavlovitz

 

Rethinking Institutional Metrics of Success

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Recently, I was talking to a superstar surgeon who had travelled to Africa for two weeks to operate and teach. Lives were saved, a gift was given, but when he returned he was told that the two weeks he had spent in Africa resulted in not meeting his RVU target for the month…which he now had to “make up.”

Are you kidding? I can’t think of any physician that would think this is ok….

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I have held leadership roles and I am not naïve. “No margin, no mission” is a universal truth. Financial accountability and stability are necessary for us to heal patients, teach and change the future through research.   But, if we only measure and report productivity it will be the only metric that is perceived to matter…. and that’s not ok.

Financial and productivity metrics are critically important in any business. Healthcare is a very complicated business. But for physicians, medicine is a profession, not a business. This distinction explains why the standard business metrics of productivity don’t sit well with most physicians.

A stethoscope is on a balance sheet. Health care costs

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I’m becoming more and more convinced that we need to rethink how we define “success” for the physicians (professionals) who work in a business (healthcare). If we don’t, I’m afraid we will lose our way…. and potentially a generation of physicians.   So, as a starting point…. what if we thought about the following as potential new metrics of institutional “success”?

RVUs of the group, not the individual

It is human nature that what is counted is assumed to “count” the most. In addition to my friend who was almost despondent over having to “pay back” a mission trip that was part of his original contract, I have watched bright and hard-working physicians choose to stay to do one more little case or see two more consults instead of going home to their children because of this RVU pressure. By the way, these events were when a partner was on call and in the hospital, available and willing to take on this work.

Physicians are a competitive lot. If you give them a target to meet, they will do everything necessary to meet it. But the RVUs for an individual physician vary over time and with circumstances. Because medicine is a profession and not a “job”, there are very few physicians who are “slackers”.   Reporting the RVUs for individual physicians has the risk of hurting the morale of the physicians that are working hard, and rarely motivates people that don’t want to work hard. Besides, do we really want to send a report that monthly RVUs didn’t meet target to a physician who took time off to care for their own hospitalized child? (Yes, it happens.)

Let’s commit to a new institutional paradigm. Set RVU goals for the group. Trust the chiefs and chairs to be responsible for monitoring productivity. Let them take into account the normal ebbs and flows of work as a physican. Trust them to call in the few physicians who are consistently below expectations.

Turnover of physicians in the group

In an academic practice, it’s a good sign if strong, mid-level faculty members are recruited away to other institutions. In all groups there will be physicians who leave for family reasons or because a spouse has been recruited. But keeping track of physicians who leave for other reasons may be a metric that can reveal a bigger problem. Given the extraordinary cost of replacing physicians, isn’t this a metric that should be followed?

Burnout

Burnout is reported in 50% of physicians and costs institutions money. I strongly believe that every physician should have an assessment for burnout as part of their annual evaluation. Physicians that score high on the burnout scale need help – for their sake and the sake of the institution. The cost to the institution in decreased patient satisfaction and increased liability should be enough, but burnout is a life limiting or even life threatening condition. Let’s protect our most precious resource in medicine by paying attention to this epidemic. Why not reward divisions and/or groups that consistently demonstrate low levels of burnout? Why not use what they have learned to coach other groups who need help?

Support staff to physician ratio

I am quite certain that most people have no idea the amount of clerical work that physicians do today. For institutions, it’s a waste of extraordinarily profitable physician time and a major contributor to physician distress. No one knows what the ideal ratio of support staff to physicians should be, which support staff are more important, or what the differences should be between specialties.   So lets measure it, report this metric and compare between groups in our own hospitals and between institutions.  Let’s also make sure we understand how the ratio of support staff to physicians impacts burnout and physician turnover.

Teaching, research and innovation

Professionals work to make a difference but sometimes are not recognized for their successes. Even grown ups love a gold star.  Let’s make a big deal about teaching local physicians, publishing new research, receiving “Doc of the month” awards and building new programs. Celebrate successes – of all kinds – publically and sincerely.

Gifts of time

Likewise, let’s call out and celebrate the physicians who serve on boards of charitable organizations, who travel to treat patients and teach in underdeveloped areas, who sponsor student groups or who otherwise donate their time and expertise to make the world a better place.

Pay equity

I understand that salaries are “complex” in medicine, but it’s time to realize that they can be extremely unfair. When new physicians are hired at a higher salary than extremely successful physicians who have been there for 20 years, something is very wrong. When women and minorities consistently make less, something is very wrong.

There is no way that budgets can suddenly be changed to make pay equity a reality, but its time for all of us to make a commitment that pay equity will happen. Decide how long it will take … 5 years? 10 years? Once you have decided, let your physicians know you will commit to this change. To be transparent, report an annual metric of the percentage of physicians that meet the goal of pay equity. Make these changes. It’s the right thing to do.

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Sometimes it hurts…

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A few years after I started as an attending in pediatric surgery, I was called to see a little girl who had been with her father at a construction site. For whatever reason, a wall under construction had fallen and she was caught under it. Her injuries were severe, with massive blood loss from a crushed liver. We opened her chest, packed the liver, transfused her massively but to no avail…

I vividly remember what happened next. Instead of the usual quiet moment of reflection, the team started talking about our week, carrying on a conversation as though this was just one more event in a busy day. It hit me how unusual this was as I was driving home. It was the middle of the night and, as I drove into my neighborhood, I noticed that I wasn’t feeling anything, that the sadness and other emotions I usually felt when I lost a patient weren’t there.

A cat darted in front of my car. I got out of the car, looked at the cat and burst into sobs… which continued for a good 30-40 minutes.

The loss of a patient, the loss of a pet, or even the loss of a dream related to your career leads to grief. Granted, the depth of grief may be, and should be, less than the loss of a family member, but it is grief nonetheless.   Because these losses are often viewed as “less serious”, people may feel that it’s somehow “not normal” to feel true grief when they occur. This is particularly true for physicians, who often have to suppress these feelings to be able to treat the next patient.

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Here’s the single most important message…It’s ok to feel the loss.

The ability to cry over a tragic injury or loss of a patient is the sign of a compassionate physician or provider, not a sign of weakness.   For all of us who experience these losses, It is important to allow ourselves to grieve, if that is what we are feeling. Although this will mean different things for different people, here are a few ways that might help…

Share your thoughts with someone you trust. Talk to your friends and, in particular, senior colleagues.   It is important for your future patients that you are allowed the space to grieve. It is also normal to worry about returning to work if you’ve experienced a particularly traumatic loss.  If you have a colleague who has lost a patient, let them know in direct or indirect ways that you are there for them if they need to talk.

If you are the team leader, talk to your team. It’s important to debrief with your team (and anyone else who was there) immediately afterwards and a few days later.   Make sure you acknowledge how hard this is and ask if people are ok. Remember for many of your learners, this may be their first time to experience the loss of a patient… how you respond will be remembered as their example for the future.

“Good models teach us to handle the experiences that change us.” Thomas J. Krizek.

 Communicate with the family. Immediately afterwards, just be with them. It is human nature to avoid “bothering them” in their time of grief but try to go. Bearing witness to their grief by sitting silently with them is a powerful way to help. Write a condolence letter. Call, email or write a note 3-6 months later to let them know you are thinking of them and to ask if they have any lingering questions. Offer to meet with them if they would like.

Go to the visitation and/or the funeral. Even after a hard journey together, even if you question if you could have done something different, go to the funeral if it feels like you should. Not just for the family, who will be very appreciative – but for you. There is closure in ceremony for everyone.

Take care of yourself. Focus on self-care by being with family and friends, eating good food, exercising, sleeping and doing the things you love.   It is both the burden and privilege of our profession that we experience these moments of intense and tender transitions…. but sometimes it hurts.

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Advice physicians should follow. But don’t.

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This is a truly wonderful piece from Emily Gibson, re-posted here with her permission from her beautiful blog, Barnstorming.  Enjoy!

octevening298As we drown in the overwhelm of modern day health care duties, most physicians I know, including myself, fail to follow their own advice. Far too many of us have become overly tired, irritable and resentful about our workload.  It is difficult to look forward to the dawn of the next work day.

Medical journals and blogs label this as “physician burnout” but the reality is very few of us are so fried we want to abandon practicing medicine. Instead, we are weary of being distracted by irrelevant busy work from what we spent long years training to do: helping people get well, stay well and be well, and when the time comes, die well.

Instead, we are busy documenting-documenting-documenting for the benefit of insurance companies and to satisfy state and federal government regulations. Very little of this has anything to do with the well-being of the patient and only serves to lengthen our work days — interminably.

Today I decided to take a rare mid-week day off at home to consider the advice we physicians all know but don’t always allow ourselves to follow:

Sleep. Plenty. Weekend and days-off naps are not only permitted but required. It’s one thing you can’t delegate someone else to do for you. It’s restorative, and it’s necessary.

Don’t skip meals because you are too busy to chew. Ever. Especially if there is family involved.

Drink water throughout the work day.

Go to the bathroom when it is time to go and not four or even eight hours later.

Nurture the people (and other breathing beings) who love and care for you because you will need them when things get rough.

Exercise whenever possible. Take the stairs. Park on the far side of the lot. Dance on the way to the next exam room.

Believe in something more infinite than you are as you are absolutely finite and need to remember your limits.

Weep if you need to, even in front of others. Holding it in hurts more.

Time off is sacred. When not on call, don’t take calls except from family and friends. No exceptions.

Learn how to say no gracefully and gratefully — try “not now but maybe sometime in the future and thanks for thinking of me.”

Celebrate being unscheduled and unplanned when not scheduled and planned.

Get away. Far away. Whenever possible. The backyard counts.

Connect regularly with people and activities that have absolutely nothing to do with medicine and health care.

Cherish co-workers, mentors, coaches and teachers that can help you grow and refine your profession and your person.

Start your work day on time. End your work day a little before you think you ought to.

Smile at people who are not expecting it, especially your co-workers. Smile at people who you don’t think warrant it. If you can’t get your lips to smile, smile with your eyes.

Take a day off from caring for others to care for yourself.  Even a hug from yourself counts as a hug.

Practice gratitude daily. Doctoring is the best work there is anywhere and be blessed by it even on the days you prefer to forget.

 

What Big Magic Can Teach Those Who Serve

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“Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness.”*

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On the flight home yesterday I finished Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (She’s probably known to you for her NY Times Best Seller Eat, Pray, Love). For me, one of the overarching messages of her book was this – When you see what you do as your vocation (from Latin vocātiō, meaning “a call or summons”), and not just your job, it will transform how you view your work – a concept which I believe may be necessary (but not sufficient) to treat or prevent burnout.

As I read her thoughts on how to live a creative life, I realized that there were other ideas  that applied to physicians, physicians in training and others who serve:

 

Just show up. Every day.

“Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done. Most of it is not fairy dust in the least”

Learning and practicing medicine (or any other field) means showing up – really showing up – every day. Everyone in the first year of medical school learns that it is different than college. Cramming for exams is not only ineffective, it’s just wrong. You are no longer studying for a grade on a test…. it’s now about the patients you will take care of in the future. The same holds true during residency and when you begin your practice. It’s not just when you are a trainee.  Part of the “work” of medicine remains “unglamorous, disciplined labor”… keeping up with the literature, going to teaching conferences when you could be doing something else, finishing your hospital charts, being on call.

But the work of medicine is also about showing up every day in another sense, too – truly showing up for the people who rely on you – no matter what. That, too, can be “unglamorous, disciplined labor” when you are tired or stressed.

“Work with all your heart, because—I promise—if you show up for your work day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.”

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“They are your patients… from the first day of medical school until you retire.

“Most of all, there is this truth: No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself. Eventually, the teachers won’t be there anymore. The walls of the school will fall away, and you’ll be on your own. The hours that you will then put into practice, study, auditions, and creation will be entirely up to you. The sooner and more passionately you get married to this idea—that it is ultimately entirely up to you—the better off you’ll be.”

Caring for others gives us joy but also gives us the responsibility to know the best thing to do for them. Whether you are a first year student, 3rd year resident or a PGY35 attending, we are all still learning. “Life long learning” is not just a phrase, it’s the reality of what we do.

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It’s called the practice of medicine for a reason.

“It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”

Learn the art of deliberate practice early. Deliberate practice, to use a musical analogy I learned in Cal Newton’s fantastic book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, doesn’t mean playing the piece from start to finish 20 times in an hour. It means spending 55 minutes on the small section that you struggle with, repeating it 100 times before you play the piece through once. It means instead of reading the comfortable material on the anatomy of the kidney, you deliberately tackle how the nephron works. It means that instead of doing the computer-simulated cholecystectomy 10 times you spend an hour tying intracorporeal knots in the trainer. Find the thing that is not easy and practice it over and over until it becomes easy.

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There is Peril in Perfectionism

“There are only so many hours in a day, after all. There are only so many days in a year, only so many years in a life. You do what you can do, as competently as possible within a reasonable time frame, and then you let it go.”

One of the greatest attributes of those who care for others is their devotion to the people they serve. But perfectionism, taken to its extreme, is dangerous. Extending your time to study for Step 1 beyond what is reasonable to try to get a higher score, revisiting decisions about patient care to the point of anxiety, worrying that your GPA has to be perfect are all counterproductive. The motivation to do well is like a cardiac sarcomere – a little worry will make you more effective, but stretched too far, there won’t be any output at all.

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Curiosity can overcome fear.

“No, when I refer to “creative living,” I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”

It’s something most students don’t realize, but no matter how long you practice medicine, there are days when you are afraid. It takes courage to do what we do. Remember, being courageous is not an absence of fear, it’s being able to do what’s right despite the fear. I agree complete with Elizabeth Gilbert that curiosity helps. When you have something that doesn’t go the way you expect or frightens you, instead of beating yourself up (“I should have studied more”….”I could have made a different decision”…etc…etc) become curious. If you are thinking about a complication, commit to finding everything you can about the procedure and how to prevent complications. If you didn’t do as well on your test as you thought you should, look up different techniques to study, take notes, and remember information, and go back to make sure you really understood what was being tested.

Even more powerful than curiosity is gratitude. Fear and gratitude cannot exist at the same moment. Try it – the next time you are about to snap because your EMR freezes be grateful that you can see the computer, be grateful you have work, be grateful you have been trained to help other human beings …and see what happens.

“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

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Your worth is not the same as your “success”.

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Wow…. This one is so important.

It’s not what you make on Step 1. It’s not how many cases you do, how many patients you see or how much money you make. This concept is taught by every religion and philosopher I know – for a reason. Be devoted to doing the best you can and to forgiving yourself (and learning from it) when you fall short.

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One last thing….for medical students trying to choose a specialty – forget about finding your passion.

This is a little longer quote than the others, and mirrors a similar message in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love .

Find something, even a little tiny thing, that makes you curious (or fills you with wonder) and follow it. Dedicate yourself to following that curiosity and it will likely lead you to your career.

“May I also urge you to forget about passion? Perhaps you are surprised to hear this from me, but I am somewhat against passion. Or at least, I am against the preaching of passion. I don’t believe in telling people, “All you need to do is to follow your passion, and everything will be fine.” I think this can be an unhelpful and even cruel suggestion at times. First of all, it can be an unnecessary piece of advice, because if someone has a clear passion, odds are they’re already following it and they don’t need anyone to tell them to pursue it…..I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone…..In fact, curiosity only ever asks one simple question: “Is there anything you’re interested in?” Anything? Even a tiny bit? No matter how mundane or small?….But in that moment, if you can pause and identify even one tiny speck of interest in something, then curiosity will ask you to turn your head a quarter of an inch and look at the thing a wee bit closer. Do it. It’s a clue. It might seem like nothing, but it’s a clue. Follow that clue. Trust it. See where curiosity will lead you next. Then follow the next clue, and the next, and the next. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a voice in the desert; it’s just a harmless little scavenger hunt. Following that scavenger hunt of curiosity can lead you to amazing, unexpected places. It may even eventually lead you to your passion—albeit through a strange, untraceable passageway of back alleys, underground caves, and secret doors.

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*Italics are quotes from Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Since I read this on my Kindle, I don’t have page numbers!

 

 

Yes, I’m a Surgeon and Yes, I teach Mindfulness

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At the most recent ACS Clinical Congress, I was really struck by a presentation on mindfulness given by Sharmila Dissanaike and asked her if she would be willing to write about the topic for wellnessrounds.  To my delight she agreed!

 

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The recent #Ilooklikeasurgeon phenomenon reminded me that times do indeed change – albeit slowly. The peak of this phenomenon happened to coincide with my talk at the American College of Surgeons on “Mindfulness for Stress Reduction and Burnout Prevention”. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would one day deliver this brief lesson in stepping off the treadmill for a few moments, I would have said you were crazy. Surgery was only for the tough, and the tough don’t need breaks (or so we thought). As a woman surgeon, it was even more important to me that no chinks show in the armor, and being a trauma surgeon proved an easy way to solidify my “street cred” despite being a 5”2’ little brown woman with long hair.

So it has taken a while for me to feel confident enough to broach such a “soft” topic in a public surgical forum. Obviously age and (a little) wisdom has probably helped, but there is also a tangible change in the prevailing culture of surgery as exemplified by the #Ilooklikeasurgeon movement and other similar initiatives; where calling for help is no longer an (automatic) sign of weakness, and the surgical community has accepted that the good old days (or bad old days, depending on your perspective) are well and truly over. The next generation of surgeons is currently being greeted with much hand wringing and wailing and gnashing of teeth, for how could a group of kids raised in this limited workhour era possibly achieve the heights of excellence that the “old school” surgical residents achieved? Since the switch to 80-hour workweek happened exactly midway through my residency, I have the privilege of a foot in both worlds, and while I agree that our training paradigms do have to change, I am not yet ready to concede that the golden age of surgery is well and truly behind us. Partly, this is because of the audience that gathered for the session at ACS. What stunned me even more than the opportunity to speak on mindfulness was the full house that gathered for this session, and the enthusiasm and interest generated by a wonderful audience of men and women of all ages, and in nearly equal proportions – it embarrasses me to admit that I had expected to be speaking to a handful of younger female surgeons. Instead, I met the 65 year old broad-based general surgeon who came because he recently lost a younger orthopedic surgeon colleague to suicide – by stabbing himself through both femoral arteries, with surgical precision of course. I met several Governors of the College, who were in the classic “grey haired” demographic, and yet optimistic and enthusiastic about the future of surgery, and the improvements to be had by focusing more on our wellness – that “healing the healer” would have tangible results not just for our own wellbeing but also that of our families and our patients, and was thus an obligation, not an option. I met young surgeons a few years out of residency/fellowship who had already recognized the need for maintaining their own mental health in order to remain functional for as long as possible in order to maximize the productivity to be gained from their long training – working less was certainly not on their priority list. There was clear recognition of the systemic problems that drive a lot of surgeon frustration with ensuing burnout – bureaucracy, being treated as interchangeable expendable cogs in a machine, electronic medical records and endless paperwork topping the list – and yet there was also an acknowledgement that adjusting internal cognitive factors was at least as important for wellbeing as it was to try and change some of the external factors.

The methods I teach are focused on building resilience and capacity – characteristics that are both innate and learned, which can be developed and expanded through meditation and other techniques. One of my favorite analogies is that a spoon of salt in a cup of coffee renders it immediately unpalatable; the same spoon in a river or swimming pool would not be noticed. The spoon of salt represents the unavoidable daily irritants in our lives – the cases that run late, the scrub tech who doesn’t know what instruments you use, the colleague who lets you down in a key meeting. The cup of coffee of course is us – or at least, where most of us start. Instead of spending our lives either trying to avoid all these frustrations (which is futile) or becoming upset when they happen, mindfulness can increase our capacity to be with them fully, accept them for what they are and yet respond thoughtfully and effectively instead of blindly and automatically reacting with anger or frustration (which usually only causes us more trouble in the long run). Over time, we develop an increased capacity to handle irritation without it placing us in a perpetual bad mood, and increased resilience to bounce back from the inevitable traumas of life, both personal and professional.

So why teach mindfulness to surgeons, when there are plenty of other things I could be doing that would probably be more directly beneficial to my career? Because I do believe that the biggest waste of potential is to take a motivated young person, put them through the grueling training to be a surgeon, set them out on a career that is of such benefit to society, and then allow them to flounder and become discouraged 5 – 10 years later, quickly discarding those hard-earned skills as they turn into full time administrators, wound care docs or some other alternate career path. Not that there isn’t value to these professions of course, and some people do realize at a late stage that they are better suited to another path – in which case all of these are excellent choices. But too often it is one bad outcome that leads to a malpractice suit, or some other event that proves just too difficult to handle, that completely derails an otherwise excellent surgeon and this lack of coping – the lack of capacity, and resilience – leads to a complete abandonment of what should be an intrinsically rewarding career.

If mindfulness, meditation and other strategies can help even one surgeon regain a wider perspective and avoid this outcome, then it will have been a worthwhile endeavor.

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Dr. Dissanaike is a general surgeon with primary focus in trauma, burns and critical care, and a Professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, TX. She serves as Medical Director of the Level 1 Trauma Center and Co-Director of the regional Burn Center. She has an interest in ethics and humanism, and is on the ethics committees of both the American College of Surgeons (ACS) as well as the American Burn Association.

Celebrating Match Day!

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Yesterday was Match Day.  At noon EST, just over 17,000 4th year medical students simultaneously found out where they will go for their residency training this July.

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Medical training is punctuated by ceremonies like convocation, the White Coat ceremony, the donor ceremony (to acknowledge the “silent professors” in anatomy) and graduation.  But of all the ceremonies, the one that is pure joy is Match Day.

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I truly believe that any physician disillusioned with their work, or even suffering from burnout should be “prescribed” attending a White Coat ceremony, donor ceremony and/or Match Day.  I’m serious!  These moments of ceremony allow us to remember the reasons we choose the profession of medicine and the joy of practice. If you are part of a medical school faculty, make a point to attend one or all of these ceremonies next year.  I promise, it won’t feel like an obligation, it will feel like a gift.  If you are not in a medical school, contact the Dean of Student Affairs at your alma mater or a school close to you – we’ll help make it happen.

During the five long days of waiting between Monday, when they find out that they matched and Friday, when they open the envelope to find out where they are actually going, many fourth year students often wish this process would be replaced with an email notification…. until they experience the celebration of Match Day…

 

Congratulations to all medical students graduating this year –  and to your families, friends, and professors!

 

Photos and video from Baylor College of Medicine

 

 

 

 

Compassion: Lessons from Roshi Joan Halifax

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It’s not often that a talk completely changes the way I think about something.

I’ve been thinking and speaking about compassion fatigue for many years.  I recently had the privilege of hearing a wonderful talk by Roshi Joan Halifax. She made a strong and convincing case that “compassion fatigue” is a misnomer… and that we should think about this in a very different way.

We can never have too much compassion nor can true compassion result in fatigue.  

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Empathy and compassion are not the same thing.

Empathy is a necessary prerequisite for compassion, but compassion goes beyond empathy. Empathy is the ability to be with someone who is suffering, to be able to feel what they are feeling. Compassion, on the other hand, is being for someone who is suffering, being moved to act and find a way to relieve their suffering.

Link to Roshi Joan Halifax TED talk “Compassion and the true meaning of empathy”

Self-regulation is the key to being able to remain compassionate and this skill can be taught.

We all respond to situations of suffering with “arousal”, a state that varies in intensity depending on the severity of the suffering, and our own memories and experiences.   How you respond to this state determines whether you can stay present, effective and compassionate.  Roshi Joan Halifax offered the mnemonic “GRACE” as a way to teach this skill to medical students, residents, physicians, nurses and other health care professionals.

G:  Gather your attention. Take three deep breaths.  Be present.

R: Recall your intention.  We choose careers in medicine to help heal the sick and to reduce suffering.  It’s not easy to remember this intention when we are overwhelmed.  But, in the moment we are faced with a human being who is suffering, we must let our own response (and the demands of the day) go and remember why we are here.

A:  Attend to yourself.  Being able to detect what is going on in your own body is the same “wiring” you use when you feel empathy.   After gathering your attention and recalling your intention, pay attention to what is going on in your body.  Watch your breath, feel where there is tension, pay attention to sensations.

C:  Consider what will really serve.  Moving from empathy to compassion is defined by considering the actions that will relieve suffering.  Really consider the person and the situation and decide what is most likely to improve the situation.

E:  Engage ethically.

“Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way. And compassion helps us as well.”  Joan Halifax

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