One physician’s journey to direct primary care – a burnout tale

Donald Ross (an obvious pseudonym) has practiced in a medium sized town for around 20 years.  I count him as a protege as we worked together during his residency.  As a clinician educator, we work with many interns and residents and sometimes we develop lifelong relationships.  Donald Ross and I share a love of golf, ACC basketball (although we root for rival teams), and internal medicine.  We periodically communicate through Facebook. Recently, he posted on Facebook that he was leaving his current group practice to start a retainer practice.  I have visited him as a guest lecturer in the past, and we either talk or exchange messages periodically.  This announcement piqued my interest so I arranged to call him and learn more.  He has given me permission to tell his story. Donald proceed to tell me a classic burnout story.  I suspect all my readers know that Physician Burnout Is An Epidemic.  Donald’s story is classic.  As family physicians and internists increasingly become employees, the practice leadership defines rules and expectations.  Most such practices embrace electronic records. How did that impact Donald?  His schedule included 20 minute increments.  Between patients he would try to write his notes and handle electronic tasks.  He noticed that he was becoming increasingly unhappy with medical practice. With the growth of hospital medicine, he (like many internists) quit following his own patients in the hospital. His tipping point came when a pa...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs