110. Stop Physician Burnout - Einstein says this is the simplest way to do just that

In this episode, you'll discover the simplest way to prevent physician burnout. It's not by solving it, because remember, burnout's not even a problem in the first place. There is no solution.

And anyhow, Einstein said everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Let me show you the simplest way to stop physician burnout. Let's get started.

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Stop Physician Burnout Podcast, a physician leadership podcast where you will learn the skills so that we can join together and lead the charge to physician well being. Skills to earn the respect of your colleagues in the front lines.

Skills to exercise true influence in the C suite and take back your job, your practice, your career and your life. All of these tools have been proven effective in my 40,000 doctor physician coaching and training practice.

And if I know one thing, I know you're super busy. So let's get started.

Physician burnout is the number one challenge to any physician leader, especially with our burnout rates these days above 50% across all specialties and every state in the union. But remember, Back to episode 107. Burnout's not a problem. There is no solution. It's more complicated than that, but only a little bit more.

Burnout's actually a dilemma. It's a never ending balancing act. It's like a teeter totter. On one side is the energy that you burn.

On the other side is your ability to recharge the energy you put into your life and your practice to maintain a positive energy balance. It's a dilemma, a never ending balancing act. And the only way to maintain the balance you seek is with a different S word, not solution.

The word is S sty A strategy. And what's the difference between a solution and a strategy? It's just the number of steps.

You have a personal burnout, prevention and wellness strategy right now. The things you do to take care of your own physical health and energy levels. How's it working?

It's by tweaking the strategy that we can get you to the balance that you seek. And I've taught and coached over 40,000 doctors to do this in the last 14 years.

When you're talking about a person's personal burnout prevention strategy, their personal wellness strategy, another word for that is resilience. And resilience has gotten a bad name because you can't just focus on the doctor.

You can't just focus on resilience because you can be resilient as all get up and run. And I can still create a work environment. That will break you.

That's because when we have doctors working inside a healthcare delivery organization, it's a perfect reproduction of the canary in the coal mine. Back in the eighteen hundreds, before they had air quality indicators, they would carry a canary down in the mine in a little cage for a couple of reasons.

Number one, a canary never stopped singing. These were boy canary singing for girlfriends. And a canary dies in bad air before a human being.

So they would set the canary off to the side and they would go dig in the coal. Every once in a while, they'd stop and listen to hear if the bird was singing. If the bird was singing, they went back to work.

But if they stopped and the bird wasn't singing, they checked the cage. If the bird was down, that meant the air was bad. They would drop their tools and run to the surface.

Canaries are an indicator of the health of the mind. And in healthcare, everybody who works inside the healthcare organization is a canary. You're a canary, okay?

Even if you're a leader, you're still a canary because you're inside the mind, too. And focusing on resilience of the individual doctor, focusing on the strategy that each of us uses to take care of ourselves is never enough.

Because in addition to the canary having their own strategy, somebody's got to be watching the mine. And that's the job of physician leaders. We're the ones who set up the systems and the culture that make the mind less stressful.

And all of our burnout prevention efforts, creating a coal mine strategy, an organizational strategy, are to de stress the mind.

So the simplest possible way to successfully prevent, stop, minimize physician burnout is a pair of strategies operating simultaneously and in parallel, one strategy for each canary. Each canary has their own strategy, and somebody has to be working a burnout prevention strategy on the mine itself.

Now, what's interesting and what we've learned is that no healthcare worker, doctor, nurse, anybody else comes to their employee status after they've graduated from their training program knowing anything about burnout, symptoms, recognition, prevention.

So the first job of the corporate coal mine strategy is to complete the medical education of every canary, which is why I've taught 40,000 doctors how to recognize and prevent burnout on behalf of the organizations that employ them.

So, as Einstein would tell you, the simplest possible way to prevent physician burnout is a pair of strategies, one for each canary, one for the coal mine, operating simultaneously and in parallel. You cannot move the needle on burnout without at least that level of complexity.

That is the simplest way possible to successfully address physician burnout and it is exclusively within the realm of the leaders of the organization. And the ones that bridge the concerns of the front line to the managers are the physician leaders. So be thinking about strategy.

Teaching strategy to your workers and working a corporate strategy to make the work as smooth friction free as possible, and creating a culture where everybody knows you've got their back and care about them as human beings. There you go. And if you'd like any advice on how to put a twin strategy in place in your organization, my discovery link is in the show notes.

I'll be happy to talk to you about your situation. That's it for now. Keep working strategy until I see you in the next podcast. Keep breathing and have a great rest of your week.