“When you walk into the ER, when you’re going to work, it’s just having that mentality,” she said. “You’re there to have a legacy, you’re there to change lives. You’re there to make an impression on your patients, on your staff.”
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St. Luke’s University Health Network, the region’s largest, most established health system, a major teaching hospital, and one of the nation’s 100 ...
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Competitive
St. Luke's University Health Network
Read MoreSt. Luke’s University Health Network, the region’s largest, most established health system, a major teaching hospital, and one of the nation’s 100 Top
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Competitive salary + Benefits
St. Luke's University Health Network
Read Moreimmediate need for practicing Emergency Medicine Physicians to join our dedicated team of physicians. Collectively, the team provides
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania
Competitive salary + Benefits
St. Luke's University Health Network
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2 Responses to “Mills Lecture: Beware of Burnout”
October 18, 2016
RHPEELERThe fundamental problem regarding burnout is the inappropriate direct & indirect underfunding of the ED: inadequate emergency physician staffing for the extant patient volume / severity / acuity; inadequate nursing staffing; old, inadequate equipment.
What is the primary source of these unethical inadequacies?
When the average ED physician income is ~ $400K, as compared to the salary / bonus band of the C-suite [$500K – $20 Million], it is not difficult too ascertain that the compensation structure is upside down.
As our readers well know, depending on choice of specialty / fellowship, physicians attend medical school & train in residency / fellowship after high school graduation, for 12 – 17 years, whereas the C-suite crowd typically have at most an MBA (2.5 year committment), a not insignificant training difference of ~ 10 – 15 years.
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The only effacacious method to rectify this obnoxious status quo with any sense of urgency, as far as I can project, is for the tens of thousands of EMPLOYED emergency physicians {as well as All other employed physicians, whether in practice or training}, is unfortunately to form employed physician >*UNIONS,*< whether nationally or in local / regional micro-aggregations.
Only then can we right-size & decompress our unwieldy workload so as to be able to actually ENJOY our patient encounters, obviate a large percentage of avoidable burnout, & get our comp back UP to where it should reasonably be, viz., $750 – 950K per year for EM, & $3 -5M per year for certain subspecialties with extended training periods, such as CardioThoracic & NeuroSurgery.
This will probably take ~ 5 years to accomplish, so we had best start ASAP.
The success of this movement will largely depend on altruistic retired or close-to-retirement physicians, who will not personally benefit from these changes.
If a positive pro-physician reversal is obtained, this momentum contra-centralization will also assist the reversal of current USA Corporate-Governmental Oligarchic Neo-Feudalism, in which the entire country finds itself.
October 18, 2016
BrianBurnout ate me for lunch. 14 years in a department that I planned to retire from…instead it drove me away. I swore I was going to be a worker bee in a small ED, instead I wound up quality committee chair, Med exec, and medical director. Angry patients, satisfaction scores, metrics, contract negotiations, short staff, inadequate nursing, angry consultants, boarding…I left the field and just secured a position in a dermatology practice. It does not matter where you work, it’s all the same. I cannot fathom what will happen when all the baby boomers hit their 80’s and are in the halls bemoaning how they ought be cared for and frankly don’t get what they deserve…expedient care.