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  Fall 2012
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Suicide Prevention Resources 

 

The Suicide Prevention Resource Center offers many free online resources on how health care workers can help prevent suicide.

  

The latest issue of National Council Magazine is a full issue focused on suicide prevention and is available for free download. 

  

Wiley Blackwell offers online access to a 

World Suicide Prevention Day Research Collection.

 
 
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Inspirations


"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already."

 

John Buchan 

(1875-1940)

Scottish Novelist, Poet and Governor-General of Canada 

Physician Well-Being and the Future of U.S. Healthcare

 

Born in Austria and raised in the United States, Walt attended medical school at Loma Linda University and knew he wanted to become a pathologist. He went on to work for the Mayo Clinic where he become a renowned neuropathologist. He had 20 articles in progress in 2011 before he killed himself last October. How many Walt's are out there?

  

The Challenge at Hand  

While this story may seem extreme and shocking, suicide and the challenges of maintaining well-being are, unfortunately, all
too real for physicians, nurses and other health care workers. From JAMA to the Annals of Internal Medicine, empirical research has highlighted health risks that are especially high for physicians. Numerous studies have examined areas of poor health and outcomes for physicians themselves, and over the years, researchers have consistently documented a high suicide rate among physicians.

 

Increasingly, the health of our overall healthcare system is dependent, among other things, on well-functioning physicians, nurses and healthcare workers. Identifying and treating impaired physicians, in particular, is nothing new, and identifying and intervening to avoid disruptive physician behavior has been a priority for many organizations in recent years. However, despite a history of attention to physicians' physical and emotional health, many doctors still leave their careers early due to distress, burnout, depression, anxiety and alcoholism.

 

In fact, according to a national survey of physicians we recently conducted as part of our research on this topic, while 85 to 90 percent see medicine as a calling:

  • One-third would not choose medicine as a career if they had it do over.
  • One-quarter admit to depersonalization feelings about their patients.
  • Nearly � are at high risk of emotional exhaustion.
  • Another are at moderate risk of emotional exhaustion.

In addition: 

  • About 30% hope to leave medicine.
  • More than 50% hope to reduce the amount of time they give to direct patient care.
  • And 32% said, "If I had to do it over again, I would choose a different specialty."

Read more........

 
What Physicians Are Saying 

  

Bureaucratic Hassles:

"The expectation of perfection and the real threat of a lawsuit, if that impossible standard is not met just one time.  This is an incredible emotional and psychological burden."

 

Time Burdens and Work-Life Balance

"I am just in a rough patch right now.  I love being a physician, but the demands are burning me out."

Losing Heart

"I left family medicine for urgent care because of the stress, lack of time, lack of sufficient resources, depression, and administrative hassles."  

  

From The National Study on Physician Well-Being. Contact [email protected] for more information.  

 

 
  
Notations

Partnering with Ted Hamilton, MD, 

Vice President of Medical Mission for 

Adventist Health System, Courageous Healthcare's Richard J. Bogue, PhD, FACHE, wrote 

an article for H&HN Online titled 

"Fostering Relationships with Physicians

in the August 9, 2012, issue. 

 



We believe physician well-being is the optimization of a personal and professional experience. Want to learn more? Courageous Healthcare has targeted Physician Well-Being Self-Assessment Tool (PWSAT) services and surveys available, including tools specifically for practicing physicians, medical school students and residents. We also have a nursing version available (NWSAT). We have designed each to be brief, reliable and valid, easy to administer and specifically focused on well-being and not bad behavior. Please visit our Web site for additional information.

 

Physician Well-Being                                                   Continued..........  Continued 

 

These findings are especially startling when put in the context of the Affordable Care Act and other healthcare reform efforts that are increasing our country's reliance on physicians and specifically, their ability to provide better outcomes, including quality care and satisfied patients. It is no secret that physicians' health and well-being can significantly impact both.

  

So, what to do?

 

Measuring Physician Well-Being

The first step to understanding and addressing any problem is measuring it. To scientists, a theory without measurement is like sunbathing with no knowledge of UV levels. You can feel the warmth and maybe the burn, but you can't tell how much it is helping or harming you. That is why in 2005, a team of physicians, health care administrators and researchers started studying ways to measure and optimize physicians' personal and professional experience. 

 

So what exactly is physician well-being? We define it as the intentional cultivation of an optimal personal and professional experience by and for physicians. Through our work, we have identified four domains in which well-being may be optimized:

  • Bio-Physical
  • Psycho-Emotional
  • Socio-Relational
  • Religio-Spiritual

Further, we hold that optimizing physicians' experience in these four domains results from the pursuit and practice of a balanced lifestyle. 

 

The Physician Well-Being Self-Assessment Tool

Research in this field has led to development of the Physician Well-Being Self-Assessment Tool (PWSAT), a method for measuring physician health and well-being across all four domains. PWSAT is a 40-question survey that produces scores for individual physicians in each domain and shows how they compare to a national baseline and to their peers. The goal is that the results be used to engage leadership and ultimately, to stimulate solutions and action.

 
Lessons Learned So Far 

Through implementation of the PWSAT, we have uncovered three general classes of maladies that are having the greatest impact on physician well-being:  bureaucratic hassles, time challenges and "losing heart." Our goal is to encourage healthcare systems to better understand the specific challenges within their individual organizations and then work together toward possible solutions. For physicians, this means maintaining a work-life balance, protecting themselves from the stressors of their careers, and improving habits for treating themselves and their patients as persons. For health care executives, this means promoting patient-centeredness, establishing stronger and more positive working relationships, and developing more effective partners in patient care outcomes.