RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Professional Loneliness and the Loss of the Doctors’ Dining Room
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 461
OP 463
DO 10.1370/afm.2284
VO 16
IS 5
A1 Frey, John J.
YR 2018
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/16/5/461.abstract
AB Historically, family physicians moved among all the venues of medical care— office, hospital, community—and were a part of a connected professional community. That connected community was sustained in great part through informal gatherings of clinicians in hospitals, clinics, and professional organizations. The current fragmentation of medicine into narrowly defined, boundaried workspaces and job descriptions, as well as the increasing size of practices has negatively affected the professional culture in which physicians work. These structural changes have led to an increasing sense of professional loneliness that not only threatens the quality of clinical care by replacing personal discussions about patients but also poses risks to physician personal and professional wellbeing.