The Best Practices to Avoid Physician Burnout

As a physician, you play a significant role in society. You’re responsible for keeping people healthy. Yet your day-to-day responsibilities may take a toll on your well-being. Loss of enthusiasm at work, emotional exhaustion, and low sense of accomplishment—these are just some of the challenges that physicians like you face. These may lead to fatigue and even worse, physician burnout.

Source: Medscape National Physician Burnout, Depression & Suicide Report 2019

Feeling burned out is way beyond the control of your practice. However, it is possible to lessen physician burnout by addressing its causes. We’ve gathered the best practices for you to avoid physician burnout before it happens. 

As a physician, your primary goal is to spend more time on patient care. But with all your responsibilities, focusing on administrative tasks is unavoidable. Share the load with your staff and learn when to set limits with work to avoid exhaustion. 

As cliché as it might sound: you need to take a break. Schedule a personal time for yourself to bounce back after a long day/week at work. 

With charts, paperwork, and lives on the line, it’s no surprise that physicians find it hard to find a balance between providing care and doing administrative tasks. Evaluate your workflow and see what can be improved, from scheduling to billing processes. 

Practice management systems are designed to help you automate your practice so it runs like a breeze. Being able to manage every process of your entire office on a single platform will save you from the headache associated with manual paper and desk work.

Running your practice should be fulfilling, not burdensome. You may not control the causes for physician burnout, but you can control how you run your practice. When you maintain an efficient and adaptable practice environment, avoiding physician burnout won’t be as difficult as it may seem.