MD Whistleblower

Last week, I presented some of the top frustrations that patients have with the medical profession.  As promised, here is a sampling of physician frustrations.  This is hardly a scientific survey but is taken from my own experience and conversations with colleagues over the years. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Industrial Complex.   Odds are very high that if you query your physician about the most frustrating aspect of their professional, that EMR will be in the top 3.   It continues to sap hours away from face-to-face time with patients.   A glitch in the computer system can paralyze the office.   And nothing strikes fear in medical providers more than a looming EMR upgrade. An upgrade means that whatever processes I have barely memorized will become null and void. The Electronic Portal.   This is the computer’s ‘in basket’ into which all communications, test results, patient inquiries, pharmacy issues, medication refill denials, notes from b...

Some time ago, I penned a post advocating union membership for nurses.  Increasingly, I expect physicians to seek professional relief by joining unions in the years to come. This is not about the money. There have been pockets of unionized physicians in the United States but efforts to organize physicians writ large have not yet gained widespread traction.   One group of doctors who are overripe to unionize is medical interns and residents.   These professionals work endless hours with sleep deprivation and have insufficient days off to recuperate or recreate.   Of course, they are underpaid for the hours they work but this ranks low on their list of grievances.   Yes, there are reforms put in place, but I have it on good authority that existing loopholes and training program policies have rendered today’s residencies very similar to mine over 3 decades ago.    If you track the evolution of the medical profession over the past 20 years or so, unio...

Over the past few months, I’ve written enough posts on Medical Burnout that I have created a new category to house them.  Readers will find there posts detailing the causes and consequences of burnout in the medical profession. The profession has been long on the causes but short on solutions.   What must be done to loosen the burnout shackles from medical professionals? It will be a huge undertaking for caregivers and society at large to turn this ocean liner around.  And it will take time.  The first step must be to obtain a commitment to the overall mission from as many constituents as possible.   Support will be needed from medical professionals, hospital leadership and administrators, physician employers, insurance companies and the public.   As with many reform efforts, many of the players must be willing to sacrifice some of their own interests in order to server the greater good – a worthy and rare event.   Without adequate buy-in...

As promised in a prior post , here’s a sampling of issues that are grinding down doctors.  Physician burnout is no mystery illness; we know the causes.   Electronic Medical Records (EMR) .   This modernization of medical data recording has been a true gamechanger for billers and medical coders.   For doctors, it continues to be a source of great angst and frustration.   A few years ago, I was using 4 different EMR systems all at once.   Sound like fun?   It wasn’t.   EMR, despite its advantages, has been a potent force threatening doctor-patient relationships.   How do patients feel watching their doctors pecking away at keyboards throughout most of the visit with hardly any eye contact?   EMR also spews forth hours and hours of tasks and communications (previously known as paperwork)  which are hard for doctors to keep up with.   Readers are referred to the EMR Quality category on this blog for additional rants, I mean ...

While medical careers at all levels are suffering from burnout, this post will focus on nurses, particularly those who work in hospitals.  Ask any of these nurses about the burnout phenomenon and make sure you have an hour or two available to hear a sober soliloquy on the subject. What brought this plague upon them?  Is there an antidote? For nearly my entire career, I rounded daily at local hospitals attending to my patients.  I worked very closely with hospital nursing staff for nearly 3 decades.  They are selfless professionals who give their patients and their colleagues all they have.  Indeed, the public tends to trust them more than they do doctors, and I understand why.  Nurses always have their patients’ backs, but who has theirs?  Are they overworked?  Yes.  Are they underpaid?  Yes.  Do they feel appreciated by their employers?  Take a guess.  The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced a new crisis in hospital nursing ...

There is an epidemic of burnout in this country.  Many professions are targeted.  Ask a teacher, a police officer, a politician or even your mailman about the increasing burdens that have been foisted upon them, and be prepared to hear frustrating and demoralizing responses.  The burnout malady has hit the medical profession hard and is reaching down the age ladder toward younger medical professionals. While my generation didn’t create burnout by intention, it does seem that we have permitted and even facilitated its proliferation.   Why have we done this?   What are the consequences?   How can we push back? Using a medical analogy, it’s often much easier to diagnosis an affliction than it is to treat it.   For instance, physicians routinely and reliably diagnose degenerative arthritis, but we can’t cure it and often our treatments are inadequate.   So, it is with burnout, particularly once it has become firmly established in our occupational ...