“We can’t expect those with a business school mindset to solve physician burnout. What is needed is leadership throughout health care organizations by those with expertise in the core business, deep commitment to health care workers and patients,…
Category: Psychiatry
Domestic violence: May the circle be broken
My youngest daughter just got married to a fine young man. She was beautiful and radiant. As I gave my daughter away when the minister told me to, I sat down next to a picture of my deceased husband. He passed away four years ago. Lisa was our last chi…
Physicians attacking physicians online: trauma of the second order
Anniversaries are usually joyous occasions to celebrate – a wedding date or a date of independence, for example. Other anniversaries invoke solemn occasions, such as the end of a war or 9/11 after the bombing of New York. But there is another type of a…
When telemedicine leads to burnout
Recently, one of my coaching clients came to our Zoom session looking exhausted. I wasn’t surprised. She’s a physician, a leader at her hospital, and the past two years have been a lot for her. COVID takes its toll in many ways, and it has changed her …
How to preserve empathy in medicine
An excerpt from The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences. “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” What picture do you see when yo…
Dr. Lorna Breen’s lasting legacy [PODCAST]
“We have a chance to take a meaningful step in fighting burnout and mental health issues in the health care profession. We have lost too many valued and vibrant health care professionals due to an illness that is treatable but stigmatized – inclu…
The role of empathy in improving patient care and decreasing medical liability
Studies reveal that more than half of all practicing physicians demonstrate signs of burnout. Contemporary physicians face tremendous pressures due to a confluence of factors, including balancing heavy patient loads within constrained schedules, the in…
Self-harm and eating disorders in teens
An excerpt from The Addicted Child: A Parent’s Guide to Adolescent Substance Abuse. How do you know if your teen has a substance problem? The inability to control substance use despite negative consequences is a classic definition of a severe sub…
The fundamental question that encircles the whole practice of psychiatry
Mary (identifying information changed) was extremely pleasant, to say the least. By the time I met her on the senior unit, she had seemingly befriended even the orneriest of our geriatric patients. She wandered and danced about the unit, speaking with …
Take back the power and joy of being a doctor [PODCAST]
“What can we control? Our behavior and our responses to circumstances. Focusing on what is in our power to control and putting all our energy and efforts in the right places and for the right reasons seems to be a step in the right direction to m…
