We’re in a fascinating time at the moment with so many new regulations and procedures due to COVID. You and your team are probably more exhausted than ever, and you’re likely running short-staffed regardless of the amount of patients you’re seeing. This is a slippery slope that can cause your team to suffer from burnout. Plus, if you’re a woman physician, unfortunately you are more prone to suffering from burnout.
What Is Burnout?
Burnout is clinically defined as a combination of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, a sense of being ineffective at work, and a disconnection from your own thoughts and feelings that researchers call “depersonalization.”
Some work-related stressors that relate to burnout include: specialty type, workload, work hours, administrative tasks, lack of autonomy, financial stress, having children at home, work-life integration, loss of joy, fairness of compensation, and increased responsibility among the few.
The current degree of exhaustion at private practices is shocking. It can lead to the point of not even caring about seeing patients, which is the most important element of your practice. You already have to be creative enough in getting and retaining patients, so burnout is the last roadblock you need.
Why Women Suffer More
A study published on Medscape found that women have consistently reported higher percentages of burnout than men over the years. Most recently, 48% of women reported they suffer from burnout, compared to 37% of men.
Harvard Business Review published a piece that dove into the idea that women take on “more ‘non-promotable’ work at work.” The main contributing factor being they care more about the well-being of their colleagues than the success of their business.
Another huge contributing factor of why women suffer more burnout than men has to do with how work and home interact. Typically at home, women are still expected to take on most of the responsibility related to housework and child care. This leads to increased time pressures and fewer opportunities for self-care.
All of these factors work together to produce higher burnout rates, as women become more likely to take leave, cut back hours, miss out on promotions or opportunities, and face other daily demands.
How To Combat This?
If you can, catch it early. This isn’t an easy task as it’s hard to reflect on your own emotions and behaviors. By identifying patterns of burnout, you can more easily regain clarity on priorities, establish better boundaries, and take better care of yourself.
Getting support for these problems is also a must. Whether it’s from family, a friend, or even a therapist, it will be helpful to get another perspective, refocus, and re-energize. You should also be incorporating time to focus on yourself and your health, this could be exercising, getting a good sleep routine in, maybe even watching a show or movie you like.
If you want more help, at UPbook, we provide a web class that focuses on how to recharge yourself and your team. We developed this class with some of the elite practices we work with to teach other business owners how to increase profitability during this time, while also being able to refocus, motivate, and incentivize your team.
Click here to learn how to recharge yourself and your team.
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