The health care industry is experiencing a crisis. There’s a shortage of highly skilled doctors. And as a result, doctors are working long hours that are affecting their stress levels, increasing burnout rates, health and the ability to diagnose their patients properly. This piece will discuss the many solutions to this problem: from offering better, more integrative training to doctors, using telemedicine to provide patients with quick, responsive care, and what kinds of incentives medical practices can offer their doctors to increasing retention and providing doctors with the kind of environment that will help them thrive.
Virtual care’s role in fixing the health care industrial complex
The health care industry is experiencing a crisis. Doctors are experiencing record highs of career burnout — 38 percent for men and 48 percent of women respectively. As a physician who went into the profession to help people, build relationships and change lives, I find these numbers disturbing, and I know firsthand what it’s like to work under high levels of stress. After all, 20 percent of doctors and physicians work 60-80 hour weeks, leaving little to no work-life balance.
Health care as it is today is not sustainable. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Leaders in the health care industry can make a difference in the lives of physicians and in their patients by investing in their doctors and ensuring a better quality of life. So what needs to change, and how can medical practices create better environments for doctors to thrive?
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