“Adapting methods for treating burnout used in other professions may be far more effective and beneficial than the usual redundant ideas we commonly read in articles written in the medical practice media.”
Listening to what other non-medical professionals have developed and used themselves for managing burnout issues are a refreshing and inspirational venture. The methods that have benefited them that they are willing to share with others, is a unique resource that private medical practice physicians would be smart to employ.
Burnout is primarily a mental and emotional shutdown that results from a continuous and overbearing conscious extraction of energy from the mind. It’s the energy required to enable our brain to function reliably and persistently while dealing with excessive demands on it that it eventually cannot handle with any degree of efficiency. Push any engine beyond its capabilities, persistently, and it will fail.
Thomas Edison never seemed to have suffered with a burnout phase during his life, considering his effort of over 10,000 attempts to invent the light bulb. Burnout, however, has many different meanings to many people. The important issue is that burnout is not a permanent situation that can’t be reversed.
Within the medical practice business burnout in physicians is more frequent than ever and likely will increase. Becoming sick and tired of medical practice, frustrated, angry, disappointed, and feeling cornered by government predators is widespread in the medical profession today as a recent survey of physicians by the AMA reported. Over 60% of physicians admit it openly.
Of the many reasons why, physicians feel this so strongly, by far the one primary cause of the increasing destruction of private practice is the fact that physicians can’t earn enough money to keep their practice going and meet their family financial obligations.
The sequence towards “professional poverty” goes like this…
1. Physicians can’t make enough income in private practice
because of the government mandates, increasing fee
restrictions, and regulations that require excessive time
with compliance, instead of treating patients.
2. Physicians are trained for one unique profession, practicing
medicine, which means they are not educated or qualified
to succeed in other professions or must retrain for
another profession.
3. Since physicians are never educated in real business
knowledge so that they are able to run their medical
practice business profitably, like other commercial
businesses do, their medical practice business
is predestined for financial failure the day they start their
practice. Just think about this trap that no one ever
mentions to them.
4. When physicians are earning less income every day and
have no business knowledge to make their practice
profitable again, they are left in a hopeless situation for
financial survival in private medical practice… all of which
would be resolved if all medical students were provided
with a business education while in medical school.
If that scenario doesn’t logically provide you with the evidence for what economists call “financial engineering” as a means to force physicians into employment positions in order to remain in the medical profession, then I don’t know what is.
Then you must ask yourself, “Why is it that only half of physicians admit to being severely frustrated and disappointed with their careers?” This is where denial, rationalizations, excuses, and willingness to remain ignorant of the truth seem to be the usual self-protection tactics.
Why aren’t all medical doctors suffering from burnout?
The answer is… they all are but refuse to admit it. Don’t expect me to
repeat the usual advice given to doctors to avoid burnout, like…
- Take a vacation (when you have no extra income to do it)
- Cut back on your overhead expenses (when you’ve already
been doing that) - Attempt to get lots of new patients and referrals (when you
have no business ideas of how to do that effectively) - Hire a medical practice business manager (which will reduce
your net income considerably) - Hire a physician assistant or nurse practitioner (at a time
when you are barely making ends meet as it is)
What I discovered in my research about writing and expanding my knowledge about copywriting, was very appropriate for physicians to use to help avoid or treat their burnout problems.
What authors and writers use to avoid or treat their “slumps” (burnout)
Every author/writer has slumps in their writing capacity. It’s no different than what physicians feel when they reach a point where inspiration, ambition, and energy are lacking and fogs-up clear thinking. Reliable information about burnout can only be of value unless it comes from a person/professional who has had a burnout experience.
I suspect that most physicians that have had such an obvious burnout problem either didn’t recognize what it is or find ways to relieve the problem on their own. That could well account for why all physicians don’t admit to having a problem with burnout.
One of the most effective methods of managing an author’s slump was discussed in a recent copywriting newsletter that I subscribe to … www.copywritersroundtable.com . A “slump” seems to have two segments; short or long. Short slumps becomes not-so-short, and it starts feeling like an inescapable loop of failure… not unlike a period of months in medical practice business where income is substantially lower than usual.
Before you know it, your confidence level takes a swan dive into an acid Bath. You lose confidence because you run out of things or topics to write about.
In medical practice you find yourself making the same work effort but still the income decreases. And you are out of ideas about how to promptly elevate your profits. You certainly don’t want the money problem to last for months. You see yourself lacking the business knowledge that provides all of the tools that you’d need to make it happen.
You then notice that you’re not alone. It’s happening all over the place. The medical profession is screaming down the tracks of the speed-evolution and all physicians in private practice management are riding the edge of the wave.
Writers are experiencing the rise of digital media, trying to adapt to the requirements of a new system and move their operations to the Internet.
Both physicians and writers are being pushed into a new way to make an income, both are forced to learn the new requirements and rules that they are not familiar with or trained for.
One writer had a friend that questioned whether he had ever written anything that worked. The criticism was not because he’d ever written anything for his clients that made them money, but because the friend had never heard otherwise.
Look at your medical practice business management routines and habits. What do your patients really know about you really? And all those potential patients moving around in your community, what will they ever know about you unless they become a patient of yours?
The writer’s friend responded by saying, “It just goes to show you that if you don’t blow your own horn, no one else will. Don’t be a tree that falls in the forest that no one hears.” Obviously, the friend and mentor had knowledge about marketing tools, and this was one of them.
Physicians don’t usually take their lunch time to parade around the streets with a sign listing all of the wonderful things they had done in medical practice. Among the hundreds of physicians practicing locally, how can a patient decide to choose you for their medical care? The truth is, you must tell them who you are, what you do, and what you do better than any physician in town.
Writers and physicians sell their services to make a living. Physicians sell their healthcare services to patients to earn an income, because patients are what you survive on, the more you have the more income you get. Writers sell their services to help clients to earn money. The more clients they have the more income they earn.
This writer knew that he had to get out there and show the public what he could do. He started a newsletter. He researched copywriting methods and discovered the keys to persuasion, exciting people, getting attention, and making offers that are effective, and copied those successful ideas.
About burnout cycles (slumps)
For writers their short slump cycles last three to six months on average. Other slump cycles last longer, even up to three years. Your mood must shift with the cycles. If you don’t shift with those moods or start to text new things, cobwebs form in your brain which needs a reset.
In medicine the rapid changes in technology, healthcare evolution, and medical knowledge progress, cause you over a “long burnout” period to lose passion for medicine, loss of persistence in keeping up, and eventually become a victim of stagnation. It’s why physicians are compelled to maintain required CMEs for licensure.
Brain cobwebs that are not removed, somehow become permanent. You find that problem when you notice that physicians who practice medicine based on what they learned years ago and remain behind.
Those who remain behind tend to judge all new products and services by the aged criteria that have remained in your mind from years ago. It’s what is called “confirmation bias,” meaning that new things are compared to old standards that your brain holds on to forever. One has no other comparison to judge by.
The burnout survival strategy…
Contrary to the usual strategies for resolving burnout that you find in most medical practice literature and media, this advice for preventing or rescuing you from burnout is a matter more of psychology/behavior rather than your juggling your medical practice financial management structure. The seemingly more reliable approach to burnout is to…
- Primarily, “embrace change” instead of fighting change
As a competent physician you are already working at keeping current in your medical skills and knowledge. It becomes an easy mindset and pattern of behavior for you
to intentionally alter and act on it. It’s a matter of self-discipline. So many physicians in private medical practice have become so entrenched in the habit patterns they have already developed for their practice and are so comfortably automatic in nature that they are very resistant to any changes, even when changes are required. - When feeling burned out, it is critical to have available a
means of total distraction of your mind.
All of us have a means to escape the consequences of an argument with your spouse, take a walk, drive around the block, isolate yourself and read a book, work on your hobby, call a friend, or work on a beneficial project. Take a weekend off, go on vacation, take a race driving course, create and write a book, join a sports club… but always do what you have an interest in or a passion for doing. - Start working with something completely new to you
Start doing something completely new and beneficial in your practice like outsource a job, write a procedures manual for your office staff, start a newsletter for you practice, create a vibrant referral program for your practice, regular office staff meetings, have a business consultant come in for a talk, focus on learning marketing, take an evening course at
the local college. It stimulates your mind, incites creativity, allows your passion to expand, and provides results that are encouraging. - Have in place a backup Plan B
Likely, most of us had some sort of a backup career plan if we didn’t make it into medical school. When you have a backup plan for your practice, career change, practice location, retirement,investing, paying for your kids college, getting a business education,
divorce, your death, and even selling your medical practice. A backup plan is something that will often prevent hopelessness, insecurity, excessive worry, even suicide.
If you do much outside reading, watching TV news, read newspapers, keep up on politics, you may be aware of the increasing numbers of big businesses that have “My time” off-duty programs, childcare facilities, education courses, and “sick days” as extra benefits for workers.
This is what businesses are doing to help prevent burnout and is evidence that they consider burnout as a valid factor to consider about the overturn rate of employees and the costs of
hiring and firing.
Comment…
In my mind the most inflammatory cause for burnout among physicians is the emotional feeling of hopelessness. Hopelessness is destructive to your mind’s ability to recover. It becomes more irreversible the longer it lingers in your thoughts. Hopelessness is not necessarily associated with depression but often is part of it in later stages.
It certainly isn’t difficult to imagine what happens to any physician that reaches a point when there doesn’t seem to be any options left to choose from. No one wants or expects that moment to arrive where there really aren’t any alternatives, at least none that are acceptable and tolerable.
Suppose for a minute that you become aware one day that your medical practice is failing to produce the same old income that it has made for you over the years. And if the loss of income continues to decrease significantly in the next six months, you may no longer have the income to cover your office overhead expenses, let alone that necessary to support your family.
You ask, “How could any physician in private medical practice business ever reach that situation, after all you have been doing fine for many years, financial-wise.”
Why today are so many thousands of private physicians in our country being forced to sell their practices or just close their offices completely?
Burnout begins smoldering at the time you realize you have a financial problem… your practice income is decreasing with no end in sight.
At the same time, you recognize that you never prepared for such an event. You have no backup plan. You are essentially business ignorant, which you likely at the time have no knowledge, secure feeling about, or belief that a business education could or ever would help you out of this situation.
Your medical practice back on track financially with rising income and even enable you to continue raising your income for the rest of your practice career, you probably would never
believe it.
Sure, you couldn’t afford the time off from practice and the cost of such an education being around $40,000 for an on-campus education.
The honest no B.S. truth is that the great majority of physicians with failing practices, without much difficulty can get back into the practice game financially just by learning a small amount of business self-education.
The sad part is that you were never told about the incredible power of a business education and its effect on your medical practice career, income, and happiness.
Right now, if you were losing your medical practice for financial reasons, you would feel hopelessness for lack of a reasonable alternative to rescue you. Nearly all physicians today are extremely frustrated about the possibility of losing their medical practice. When they understand that they have only one alternative, working and earning money for someone else, do you think
they would feel hopeless? Absolutely!
Frustration => Hopelessness => No alternatives => Burnout => Destruction of your chosen career
The positive side of all this is that I absolutely know for a fact that business knowledge can prevent all of these financial problems in medical practice and even cure them before they
become irreversible.
I also know for a fact that reading and learning from the business and marketing books, written by business experts who have done it all and that I recommend you read, you will gain the business expertise (for less than $500) you need to protect your medical practice from failing.
If you remain a skeptic or you are having a hard time believing these things, they are perhaps what you need to get and read my book, THE WOUNDED PHYSICIAN PROJECT.
The book tells you what you don’t know, what can happen to your practice suddenly, why it may happen, and pull you out of your skepticism mindset.
----Professional probe----
"Burnout in the medical profession is the result of a physician's sacrificial bondage to the promises they made to themselves in medical school at a time when they had no real understanding, educational instruction, or future disclosure about the innumerable controlling factors within the profession that they would soon face and have no defense against.
What is lacking for them is the one thing that offers them the universal way out of the increasing demands place on them that they are not able to prevent or escape from, nor see any time in the future when times will be better for them. That can be described as hopelessness.
It begins with our medical school education which mistakes tunnel vision for principle, closed-mindedness for superior wisdom, and personal legacy for the vital national interest--instead of a required depth of understanding, critical and creative thinking, and broad awareness of opportunities for benefiting the physicians who are the source from which our healthcare earns its patient value, top quality, persistent improvement, and survival of our culture and nation.
The stun grenade that exposes the secret ingredient is called--- a business education.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #74, 3-16-22
