Dr. Ellison is so concerned about physicians’ unhappiness in a profession they once loved that he presented the grim picture to a public, nonmedical forum, the 2017 TEDxNaperville conference in the Chicago area this November.”
He is co-CEO of the nationwide Permanente Federation. And he is a member of the board of directors of the soon-to-be Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, under construction in Pasadena. He was also part of an AMA consortium of 10 physician leaders of major medical groups, including the Mayo and Cleveland clinics and several academic medical centers, drawn together in 2016 to propose solutions to the physician burnout crisis, which jeopardizes the quality of care and is pushing more and more physicians to leave the profession. Dr. Ellison is so concerned about physicians’ unhappiness in a profession they once loved that he presented the grim picture to a public, nonmedical forum, the 2017 TEDxNaperville conference in the Chicago area this November. Among the causes of burnout, Dr. Ellison, said are that physicians, who are by nature perfectionists, feel they have lost control over their work and are “being measured on everything they do.” The electronic health care records and reporting requirements have created inefficient workf lows and less time for patients, which “feel like a gigantic pile-on.” He noted that surveys of physicians conducted in 2011 and again in 2014 showed that numbers of physicians experiencing at least one symptom of burnout rose to 54.4 percent from 45.5 percent. “But it gets darker,” Dr. Ellison said. “In the last two years data show that the rate of suicide among male physicians is 40 percent higher than that of the general public,” with female physicians’ suicide rate “130 percent greater than the general public.” In fact, he said, “The rate of suicide among physicians is similar to that of combat veterans.” Much of the problem, too, begins in medical school with many physicians entering practice after residency training already “broken and beaten,” Dr. Ellison said. He noted that two of his medical school classmates killed themselves before beginning their internships. He described his early career within the traditional “lockstep” regimen of American medical education: “I did the
Winter 2018
In a first for U.S. academic medical center, Stanford Medicine hires chief physician wellness officer BY RUTHANN RICHTER, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Tait Shanafelt, M.D., a pioneer and nationally recognized expert in physician burnout, recently joined Stanford Medicine as its first chief wellness officer, leading the medical center’s pioneering physician wellness program. His appointment makes Stanford the first academic medical center in the country to create a position of chief wellness officer at a time when physician burnout nationally has reached an all-time high. Dr. Shanafelt, whose clinical work and research focus on the treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, will direct the WellMD Center at Stanford Medicine and serve as associate dean of the School of Medicine. Leading the way Since 2008, Dr. Shanafelt has overseen multiple national surveys that included more than 30,000 U.S. physicians and about 9,000 U.S. workers in other fields. These found increasing rates of burnout among doctors; in 2014, more than half of those surveyed were suffering from emotional exhaustion, loss of meaning in work or a sense of ineffectiveness and a lack of engagement with patients. Moreover, his studies have found that as physicians suffer, so do patients: Burnout has been found to contribute to physician errors, higher mortality among hospitalized patients and less compassionate care. “I think most health care leaders now realize this is a threat to their organization, but there is also uncertainty that they can do anything effective to address it,” Dr. Shanafelt said. “They say, ‘It’s a national
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