BURNOUT PREVENTION AND RESOURCES
In today’s health care model, physicians need sound strategies for burnout prevention. Called upon to deliver an optimal patient experience and provide the highest quality care, physicians face increasing productivity and documentation demands. These requirements often lead to anxiety, fatigue, burnout, and depression.
Burnout prevention begins with obtaining the knowledge to identify and address burnout symptoms. According to Board Certified pulmonologist and critical care physician Tony Santilli MD, “Physicians today are subjected to an unprecedented number of significant stressors: overwork, cumbersome regulation, electronic medical records and coding requirements, medical liability, on-call issues, lack of sleep, politics, and frustrations with the reimbursement structure. By learning to practice Yoga Science and AMI MEDITATION as mind/body medicine, healthcare professionals can improve job satisfaction and work/life balance, while reducing and preventing burnout symptoms of anger, depression, anxiety and exhaustion.
BURNOUT PREVENTION ARTICLES
The American Meditation Institute Announces a New Research Study on AMI MEDITATION for the Relief of Stress and Burnout in Healthcare Providers
The American Meditation Institute (AMI) has received IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval through the Berkshire Medical Center to conduct a research study that will examine the impact of a basic daily mantra-based AMI MEDITATION practice on the symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue and stress in healthcare providers. The first participants in this study will be among those who received their training in Yoga Science as holistic mind/body medicine at AMI’s tenth annual Heart and Science of Yoga® CME conference October 23-27, 2018 at the Cranwell Resort and Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts.
The principal investigator of the study is Mark Pettus MD, Director of Medical Education and Population Health, Berkshire Health Systems, and the co-principal investigator is Beth Netter MD, Chair of The American Meditation Institute’s Department of Medical Education. According to Dr. Netter, “The study will evaluate how a daily AMI MEDITATION practice can help to provide healthcare professionals a happier, healthier life along with relief from burnout symptoms and an enhanced work/life balance.”
BURNOUT IN THE NEWS
Docs vs. the Public
The American Medical Association and the Mayo Clinic recently conducted a study to determine how physician burnout differs from burnout in the general working population. The study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that compared with the general U.S. population, physicians worked a median of 10 hours more per week, displayed higher rates of emotional exhaustion and reported lower satisfaction with work/life balance. Though the general population does experience burnout, the changing state of the healthcare system is clearly driving the dramatic increases in physician burnout.
Taking Care of the Physician
According to a November 2017 New York Times article, a growing body of research shows that physician burnout and depression are linked to medical errors and to the kind of depersonalized care that is often both less effective and less palatable.
Easing Physician Burnout
Meditation can reverse physician burnout, according to a study published in the September/ October 2013 Annals of Family Medicine. Dr. Mary Catherine Beach of Johns Hopkins states, “This study supports meditation as a way to improve the health of both doctors and their patients. Meditation helps doctors listen better, talk less, and see clearer what patients need.”
The American Meditation Institute founder Leonard Perlmutter claims that theoretical physicist Albert Einstein provides an important clue to understanding how physicians and other healthcare providers can prevent and relieve burnout symptoms when he wrote that, “A problem cannot be solved on the level at which it appears; it must be solved on a higher level.” According to Perlmutter, “The daily practice of AMI MEDITATION and its allied disciplines make it possible to access and employ a ‘higher level’ of intuitive knowledge from the superconscious portion of the mind that can enable individuals to make creative, stress reducing and health affirming lifestyle choices.”
According to a recent microsurvey by InCrowd, a provider of real-time market intelligence to life sciences and healthcare firms, “57% of the primary care and emergency medicine doctors surveyed said they have personally experienced burnout, and an additional 37% of respondents said that while they personally hadn’t experienced burnout, they knew others who had.”
AMI Foundation Course
Are You Experiencing Burnout?
A 2017 AMA Medscape Lifestyle Report asked physicians from 27 medical specialties to grade the severity of their burnout on a scale of 1 to 7—one being that it does not interfere, and seven indicating thoughts of leaving medicine. All but one specialty chose a level four or higher. Are you experiencing Physician Burnout symptoms?