Combating Burnout: Back to Medicine as a Calling

Katherine J. Gold

doi:10.1370/afm.2476

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re burnout
Jean Antonucci

Published on: 12 November 2019

Published on: (12 November 2019)
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re burnout
Jean Antonucci, physician
We can talk and research all we want, but frankly no one is actually just asking the troops on the ground and then taking action. No one will budge. What we want out here, is the ability to do our work.
EMRs can be great, my first had natural language processing and graphs and so on. It was a wonderful tool, but it did not meet MU.
And so on. Every process all day long is complex slow and often stupi...
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We can talk and research all we want, but frankly no one is actually just asking the troops on the ground and then taking action. No one will budge. What we want out here, is the ability to do our work.
EMRs can be great, my first had natural language processing and graphs and so on. It was a wonderful tool, but it did not meet MU.
And so on. Every process all day long is complex slow and often stupid. I can, for instance, no longer call up the hospital across the street and make an appointment for a patient to see a cardiologist. Cannot do it, not allowed. Cannot order Spirometry. Not allowed. Why? Because we merged with MaineHealth and MaineHealth says I have to have finished the note and the order and also staff must see if something has to be prior auth'd (an appointment with cardiology is never prior auth'd). So a patient sitting here cannot be given an appointment, so they are called later. By staff taking up more time. Cannot be found, much time wasted. They get found, they write it on an envelope while frying dinner. They lose it, they no show, PCPs track it, more time and dollars wasted. If we could just have simple efficient processes? Or I go to the payer web site and hit prior auth and do the form for say, how dare I order, a CT? If a CBC cost 3,000 I would have to prior auth that (the runaround and dishonesty that payers care about the right things being done!) and I do the prior auth and nothing happens, so I do it again and get a fax from Marion saying we sent this to evicore and...guess what, when called...evicore has not got it. It is a third world country out here where nothing works no one can be believed and we hit our heads against the walls. Burnout?? Moral injury? Yes-lack of control because the world has gone mad and after so many times a day of complete madness, me, I just cry and look desperately to get out. Those of us who actually do this full time see fewer people due to this garbage and there is a shortage! You can study burnout, but I can tell you what to fix.
Competing interests: None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.