Big Pharma vs US citizens
Ibrahim Ghobrial February 28, 2025
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What Doctors Need to Address the Root Causes of Burnout
- By Ibrahim Ghobrial
- visuals
- 3 Comments
About the Artwork
“This piece is a representation of the main stressors in medical practice’s current environment.”
Ibrahim Isaac Ghobrial is an internist, teacher and governor of the Western Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Physicians.
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3 thoughts on “What Doctors Need to Address the Root Causes of Burnout”
As a healthcare provider for 41 years, burnout for me comes down to productivity being made equivalent to performance. I will be put on a performance improvement plan if my productivity is not at a certain percentage of my day. This percentage requirement in no way accounts for the teaching and mentoring activities of my senior position, not does it value my role on the health care team with all the required communication, family meetings and documentation necessary for quality care. What is now valued by my (large, metropolitan) institution is quantity over quality, in the guise of business efficiency. The fact is that our “products” are people as are we. Our common humanity is negated by this false equivalency of productivity and performance. In research terminology, productivity is easily measured as it is quantitative data. Performance being qualitative in nature, is much harder to “measure” but it is here that the quality in healthcare should lie. Nearing retirement, I worry for all current and future healthcare professionals that the joy and satisfaction of caring for our fellow human beings is being taken away from you, leaving you burned out and all that comes with this.
That day that the first physician accepted money and agreed to forfeit better care for patients and better working conditions, the day that first physician sold a community practice to a bloodsucking HMO, was the beginning of the end of a health care system that used to work a lot better for everyone.
You could just stop signing those managed care contracts. All of you could do that, together, since everyone seems to agree that the practice constraints and working conditions under those contracts are dismal, and worsening all the time.
Just an idea. It would probably now cost health care practitioners significant money to improve their professional lives back to what they used to be. Is it worth it to all of you to do that, to stop signing the contracts and accepting payment for substandard patient care and working conditions?
Asking for a friend….
Dr Conkling,
Very thoughtful comments.
The transition of physicians from independent small business owners to employees of large health systems with non-compete clauses, and the increasing power of medical insurance has been associated with loss of autonomy, exponential increase of bureaucracy, documentation, prior authorization, etc. with subsequent loss of joy and fulfillment. There are numerous other contributors to burnout.
Physicians need to find a way to work together to combat burnout, which will not just help them, but also the patients and the employers alike by reducing errors and turnover.