Research Assessment #7

Date - November 15, 2019

Study - Interventional Cardiology

Citation - Physician Burnout. Content last reviewed July 2017. Agency for Healthcare

Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.

https://www.ahrq.gov/prevention/clinician/ahrq-works/burnout/index.html

Analysis - Physician burnout seems dangerous with the lack of wanting to work and the more

overcoming sense to leave your practice seems that it would contribute to diminishing care and

thus higher hospitalization times and damages. However, in most cases this is not true as the

article recalls that decreased patient care was attributed to the hospital burning out the physicians

rather than actual workload and stress. This is interesting as it means that physicians with the

endless amount of paperwork and stress can still function and buffer their emotions to still

provide adequate care to patients. Physician burnout though is dangerous in the sense that

physicians are leaving their practice causing gaps that must be filled in and thus causing

physicians that stay to be overloaded and just leads to a downward spiral. With the loss rate of

cardiologist that I found from Dr. Belbel being nearly 90 percent as most are beginning to retire

or leave the field cardiologist are only replacing 10 percent of that number. This is deadly, as this

could possibly be occurring in other field which means there is no net gain of new physicians

just those that are there to fill in the gaps left behind. It could be due to selection during medical

school since it is highly rigorous and hard to get into or it could be due to cutbacks by the

hospital to save money to allocate spending elsewhere but how far will that go before hospitals

begin to shut down and there are only a few physicians that must act as a jack-of-all trades. The

hopeful aspect revealed by this article is ways to reduce burnout and help relieve stress on
hospital staff through training and cooperation between staff and hospital company to better

improve functionality. Including using physicians assistant to take notes, increasing staff present

to cover people that have to make unexpected leave and even reducing activities that physicians

must do so that they can spend more face to face time with patients to not only ease any stress

but to also better know the patient as a whole with holistic treatment. This is rivaled by all the

downsides of working in a hospital and they seem to outweigh the solutions as the medical

records now are even more time consuming and difficult to function causing increased

paperwork and time spent away from patients. This portion of burnout was exemplified during

my interview with Dr. Guerra as he noted that their electronic health records (EHR) to even open

a note on a single patient took nearly 10 clicks, 10 clicks with each click taking time to process

and load everything he spends nearly 20 minutes alone opening notes for between 20 to 40

patients that walk through his office doors. Not only is the EHR flawed and time consuming but

time pressure is difficult with having to schedule and work out times and adhere to those times to

get every patient through the door at their scheduled hours and then finish all the necessary

paperwork which can take hours upon hours to finish. Even balancing time outside of work is

difficult having to miss your children's school activities and miss precious time with them is hard

on a parent with physicians that have family that is what they feel, they feel disconnected from

their family as they just are not home all the time. Combine that with always on call 24/7 it just

makes it feel like they have to live in the hospital or in their clinic to finish every function they

have to get done. This is important information as I began this research after hearing some of the

disadvantages of working in a hospital from Dr. Guerra and it is a concern for me because if I do

pursue cardiology I do not want to face burnout within ten years of working, it would seem as if

all the work I put in up to that point would be wasted. I plan on finding ways to combat burnout
not only for a future career but also during school so that I can utilize it in my future to help and

make sure I do not just give up at my goal and waste all of my efforts. However, that alone is not

enough because there needs to be a change so that burnout decreases between all practises and

allows physicians more down time and time with their family so that they do not end up leaving

to pursue a better mental health that was only deteriorated by the field that wants to better

someone's health.