Its been 14 years since my last post and a lot has transpired in that time, both personally and externally. My son recently surprised me and sent me a couple of my old posts which led me to review some of my other old posts and I began to think about resuming. Looking retrospectively, with humility, I was somewhat prescient about certain things and way off about others. It's revealing and interesting to be able to review what my thoughts were 14 years ago and if nothing else, that was the value of having written back then. Perhaps, by restarting my blogging, I will be doing a favor to my future self.
I retired from my profession as a doctor/surgeon at the age of 57, 3 years ago, so now I have time to devote to writing. The stress of the job after 25+ years finally got to me and I was completely burned out. For the final couple of years, my thoughts always drifted towards finding an exit plan. This was a definite clue that my time in that job was nearing an end and although there were parts of the job that i enjoyed, the parts that i dreaded overwhelmed the good parts. Performing surgery was the most rewarding part but as the practice evolved, I was doing less surgery. Its probably wise for a surgeon to consider retiring after 55 since without a doubt surgical skills are on the decline.
Burnout is major problem for physicians and studies confirm the burnout rate to be surprisingly high amongst physicians and especially surgeons. Now, when I go to the doctor and I tell them that I retired due to burnout, they all look at me with envy and wish they could stop as well. Even, younger doctors.
The people who study this condition blame excess paperwork, poor work-life balance, demands of the job beyond patient care. But, beyond these, I felt the main factors were related to patient care. The need to see many patients to cover costs, the demands of the hospital regarding being on call, the inevitable difficult patient (both medically and psychologically), the stress of the patient care itself. There are always cases where things may not go exactly as planned and the stress of dealing with it takes an enormous toll. It is by nature an emotionally draining job.
Now that the vast majority of doctors work for hospital systems and large corporations, there needs to be a mechanism to ensure the health and longevity of the physician. I propose a version of a sabbatical. It shouldn't necessarily be a full year as this may impact a physicians quality upon return. But consider a system that for every year of work, the doctor earns a one month extended time off beyond the normal week vacations taken during the year. This can accumulate and after three years the doctor earns a 3 month paid extended time off. This will allow him/her time to refresh and come back renewed. I believe this system would lead to better, more compassionate physicians and would enable them to extend their careers.
As a society we need to take care of one of the most important segments of our population that eventually, we will all put our lives into their hands, our physicians.
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