‘Superman’-like expectations contribute to physician burnout, suicide
Kaiser Health News published an interview about physician burnout and a story on one of its effects—high rates of doctor suicide—on Aug. 3. In both articles, sources said physicians’ attempts to be “Superman” contribute to burnout and depression.
“The way we trained physicians to do 36 hours on a shift and somehow, we thought we’d be as good in Hour 36 as we were in Hour 1,” Tait Shanafelt, MD, the chief wellness officer of Stanford Medicine, told KHN. “We know that’s not true for any profession. We also tend to have a culture of invincibility and … a lack of vulnerability with colleagues.”
Shanafelt also detailed how burnout contributes to lower-quality care. Burned out physicians are more likely to make medical errors, exhibit unprofessional behavior or leave their jobs, impacting continuity of care for their patients, he said.
Educating young physicians about how to combat burnout will only spur improvement if the culture changes throughout healthcare, Shanafelt added.
“Unless we as a profession have a dialogue about burnout more broadly, all the things we do in training will have a limited impact,” he said. “The minute new doctors go into practice, they look at behavior of their more senior colleagues and they’re instantly going to adopt that behavior.”
Read KHN’s story on physician suicide here. Check out the full Q&A with Shanafelt below:
Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.