“Burnout” in the Workplace: A Timely Paradigm Shift

My latest article in a peer-reviewed journal published today. As it turns out, it is extremely timely, as organizations and  businesses everywhere continue to adapt and seek to innovate during this global crisis. It is the perfect time to humanize the workplace — the theme of my article, which I submitted before the pandemic!

It is also time for organizations and individuals to stop misusing the word “burnout” to blame physicians for the very system dysfunction that drives us away from clinical medicine.

I believe the pandemic, devastating as it has been and will be, is also an invitation to return to what matters most. I hope this crisis will be remembered as:

  • the time when the business of healthcare stopped running medicine.
  • the time when physicians regained their autonomy and reclaimed their voice and place as the experts in medicine.
  • that moment in the era of ‘digital everything’ when, collectively, we recalled that people matter more than things, and began to act accordingly.
  • a new day when the public understood that physicians are for them, and that is the reason we sacrifice and embark on the arduous road to become their physicians.
  • a time when the workplace stopped being about profits and productivity and became about people once more.

People. Human beings. You and me.

One can only hope. No, wait. We can also embrace these paradigm shifts and become catalysts for such transformation in our circles of influence. For it is people who change things. Always.

You. And me.

Click on the image below to read my article, “Burnout” in the Workplace: Strategies, Omissions, and Lessons from Wounded Healers. It published today in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

Stay well, and remember to be good to yourself!

To read my relevant poem titled human first, follow this link.

Amaryllis Sánchez Wohlever, MD (Dr. Mari)

I am the author of Recapturing Joy In Medicine and I am passionate about physician wellness, burnout prevention, and Helping Docs Thrive™ in the midst of a broken system in constant flux. As a coach for physicians, I love helping my colleagues develop their strengths, recapture their original calling into medicine, and embark on a path to greater joy, meaning, and purpose in medicine and in life.

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