I think maybe I could've stayed in medicine if I could've made it to the AI scribe era - the patient to patient transitions were lethal. I would have to go home and lie on the floor at the end of the day.
"The patient to patient transitions were lethal"... that says everything. I'm so sorry medicine lost you. I hope the AI scribe era might have changed things, but it shouldn't have had to come to that.
‘where a physician can remember that they are a human being caring for another human being, not just moving through a queue..’ Your patients can feel the difference too 🤍
“Stop and smell the roses”… Most of us have forgotten how they smell!
Burnout in medicine is a very real problem, the profession in general talks about it, offer some pretty sounding Hallmark Card advise, but never take a definitive stance on this serious and growing problem.
I experienced professional burnout. I was completely burnt-out for the last ten years of my professional life, perhaps more than that. I lost my family to the mounting pressures and stress modern medicine burdens most physicians today. Not only did I neglected family, often lash out at them, unloading my growing frustrations on them because they were an easy target.
Those on the other side of the medical interaction don’t understand the enormous pressure we are subject constantly to comply with conflicting goals — proving the holistic level of care which inspired us to become physicians versus the mounting pressure befallen on our shoulder by the system’s throughput and productivity demands.
A pressure cooker contains mounting pressure, but without a release valve it eventually explode. For some of us, the explosion shaped into retirement, for other, unfortunately, it ends with a permanent exit from life itself.
Burnout not only affects us and our personal lives, it adversely affects our patients. Patients are themselves saddled by their own set of stressors from normal modern life, now under even more pressure from their medical problem. They are looking for someone to toss them a lifesaver they can hold on to until the rescue fully materialize. They expect us to extend a helpful hand, a compassionate caring human to empathize with them on their hour of need. For the burnout physician unfortunately, empathy and compassion has long been exhausted. By the time we walk into that exam room what you get instead is a husk of a human, a robotic automaton who is cold, distant and only interested in walking out as fast as possible. The mind is not fully focused on the human in front of us, we finds ourselves obsessively focused on the increasing tasks we have yet to complete.
I apologize for this pointless rant, but your article awaken something deep inside me that has remain dormant, hidden deep inside myself. I never accepted being burnout during those years. Didn’t seek help for my mental strain. I was trained to believe doctors were tough, and accepting my burnout was a mark of weakness, a failure — conduct unbecoming of a physician.
Now that I am retired, my connection with that daily stress was finally severed… for good! Now I can see the experience in a different light, with clarity and new understanding. We are not weak for suffering burnout, we are just humans subject to an ever stressful existence that leads the toughest human among us into lifelong PTSD.
Now after being reborn as a human once more, I finally remember how a rose smells!
Carlos, thank you for sharing this so honestly. What you've described is the real cost of a broken system. A cost to physicians, and also everyone around them. The pressure cooker analogy is exactly right, and the fact that for some it ends in a permanent exit is something we don't say out loud nearly enough. I'm glad you're still here, still writing, still in the conversation... that matters!
It's wonderful you can be more present with each patient! And that you have some down time in between patients. Having a minute or two of down time sure is a luxury for healthcare workers these days.
Thanks for your comment! I always read the AI drafted note carefully and 100% of the time make edits and changes - but it gets me 90% of the way there!
I think maybe I could've stayed in medicine if I could've made it to the AI scribe era - the patient to patient transitions were lethal. I would have to go home and lie on the floor at the end of the day.
"The patient to patient transitions were lethal"... that says everything. I'm so sorry medicine lost you. I hope the AI scribe era might have changed things, but it shouldn't have had to come to that.
‘where a physician can remember that they are a human being caring for another human being, not just moving through a queue..’ Your patients can feel the difference too 🤍
“Stop and smell the roses”… Most of us have forgotten how they smell!
Burnout in medicine is a very real problem, the profession in general talks about it, offer some pretty sounding Hallmark Card advise, but never take a definitive stance on this serious and growing problem.
I experienced professional burnout. I was completely burnt-out for the last ten years of my professional life, perhaps more than that. I lost my family to the mounting pressures and stress modern medicine burdens most physicians today. Not only did I neglected family, often lash out at them, unloading my growing frustrations on them because they were an easy target.
Those on the other side of the medical interaction don’t understand the enormous pressure we are subject constantly to comply with conflicting goals — proving the holistic level of care which inspired us to become physicians versus the mounting pressure befallen on our shoulder by the system’s throughput and productivity demands.
A pressure cooker contains mounting pressure, but without a release valve it eventually explode. For some of us, the explosion shaped into retirement, for other, unfortunately, it ends with a permanent exit from life itself.
Burnout not only affects us and our personal lives, it adversely affects our patients. Patients are themselves saddled by their own set of stressors from normal modern life, now under even more pressure from their medical problem. They are looking for someone to toss them a lifesaver they can hold on to until the rescue fully materialize. They expect us to extend a helpful hand, a compassionate caring human to empathize with them on their hour of need. For the burnout physician unfortunately, empathy and compassion has long been exhausted. By the time we walk into that exam room what you get instead is a husk of a human, a robotic automaton who is cold, distant and only interested in walking out as fast as possible. The mind is not fully focused on the human in front of us, we finds ourselves obsessively focused on the increasing tasks we have yet to complete.
I apologize for this pointless rant, but your article awaken something deep inside me that has remain dormant, hidden deep inside myself. I never accepted being burnout during those years. Didn’t seek help for my mental strain. I was trained to believe doctors were tough, and accepting my burnout was a mark of weakness, a failure — conduct unbecoming of a physician.
Now that I am retired, my connection with that daily stress was finally severed… for good! Now I can see the experience in a different light, with clarity and new understanding. We are not weak for suffering burnout, we are just humans subject to an ever stressful existence that leads the toughest human among us into lifelong PTSD.
Now after being reborn as a human once more, I finally remember how a rose smells!
— Carlos
Carlos, thank you for sharing this so honestly. What you've described is the real cost of a broken system. A cost to physicians, and also everyone around them. The pressure cooker analogy is exactly right, and the fact that for some it ends in a permanent exit is something we don't say out loud nearly enough. I'm glad you're still here, still writing, still in the conversation... that matters!
It's wonderful you can be more present with each patient! And that you have some down time in between patients. Having a minute or two of down time sure is a luxury for healthcare workers these days.
I'm curious how often you find errors in the notes your AI scribe writes? My experience as a patient is that they make a lot of mistakes: https://diagnosticodyssey.substack.com/p/my-doctors-ai-tool-output-slop
Thanks for your comment! I always read the AI drafted note carefully and 100% of the time make edits and changes - but it gets me 90% of the way there!