Gastroenterology is a very diverse subject. Opportunities to "find one's niche" may have a result: burnout. This can be prevented on two levels: work-related and personal. This was the subject of an interesting symposium at UEG Week in Barcelona.
The life of modern physicians is often an attempt to reconcile the medical profession with research interests and everyday clinical work. However, research, in particular, requires numerous trips, e.g. to congresses, because successful projects also need to be presented.
When traveling, however, eating habits and sleep patterns usually suffer first. At home again, the services in the clinic do the rest. Stress and fatigue accumulate and ultimately lead to a feeling of burnout. The whole body then feels empty, and even weekends or holidays are no longer sufficient to recharge the personal batteries.
This already shows you that burnout does not suddenly come over you, but continues to develop, nourished by stress, fears and a lack of balance. In this context, the term resilience is often used to reduce the risk of burnout. But how does this actually work?
Put quite simply, resilience is an active choice of things that you like about being a physician and leaving out things that you don't like. It is thus a way to achieve and maintain one's inner balance between one's own ambitions and the external forces/forces.
The first way is to recognize that the variety of possibilities that gastroenterology offers the young physician, for example, should by no means be fully served by everyone. Nobody must or can do everything.
The choice of tasks according to one's own interests, paired with the formation of teams and mutual help, creates more freedom for the development according to one's own ambitions and at the same time ensures that all facets of the specialist area/clinic ward are covered in the best possible way. A further advantage of teamwork is that all members of a team can help each other early enough before individuals stumble.
As a result of burnout, many good talents are lost to the clinics every year, the quality of work decreases, more and more medical errors occur and patient satisfaction continues to decline.
For senior physicians, this means, e.g. according to the proposed model of the Mayo Clinic, motivating employees to hold regular talks, give helpful feedback and distribute the work, for example on the ward, over several "strong" shoulders, because this reduces the personal workload of the individual employees.
Burnout is not unchangeable. It is an expression of imbalances on the personal as well as on the professional level. This word-for-word burnout of physicians can be prevented, among other things, by the fact that not everyone has to do everything and that teams complement each other to the best of their ability, so that the work can be carried and performed on many shoulders. However, this also requires a working climate that promotes resilience, which in turn must be prepared by the senior physicians. After all, the management floor is ultimately "only" part of this clinical team and should always (be allowed to) participate accordingly.
Source:
Symposium "Professional risks and burnout among gastroenterologists", UEG Week 2019, Barcelona