“You can teach a canary in a coal mine to meditate, but it is still going to die.”
I have seen the canary sentiment above – used as a metaphor for health care and burnout – pop up a few times on Twitter, attributed to a few different thoughtful doctors, including Jenny Ramsey, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic (at Hospital Medicine 2018); Lucy Kalanithi, MD, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford (Calif.) University and widow of Paul Kalanithi, MD, of “When Breath Becomes Air” fame; and Stuart Slavin, MD, associate dean for curriculum and a professor of pediatrics at Saint Louis University.
Dr. Christopher Moriates
To be honest, I am rather burned out on reading about physician burnout at this point. Nevertheless, I love the canary idea; it is such a perfect visual of the current problem facing physicians.
I was thinking about the meditating canary when I read the new “Charter on Physician Well-Being,” published in JAMA and already endorsed by most major medical organizations/acronyms, including SHM, ACP, SGIM, AMA, AAMC, AAIM, ABIM, ACCME, APA, and the IHI. This physician well-being charter was created by the Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine, a group that includes leading medical centers and organizations.
What makes this different from previous attempts at addressing burnout? The charter takes a systems-based approach to physician well-being. Aha, of course! As the patient safety movement realized more than 2 decades ago, real progress would only be made when we stopped focusing our attention, blame, and interventions on individuals and instead looked at systems
It is not the fault of the burned-out physician who apparently just needs to be hammered over the head with better coping skills – just as the majority of medical errors would not be fixed by continuing to tell physicians that they screwed up and should figure out how not to do that again! We need to make real changes to the system. For example, one of the charter’s authors, Colin P. West, MD, PhD, highlighted why it is important that organizations commit to optimizing highly functioning interprofessional teams: “Can you imagine @KingJames [LeBron James] or @Oprah applying their unique skills AND personally seating the crowd, collecting stats, assessing satisfaction, etc.? So why do we?” The authors also call for organizations to commit to reducing time spent on documentation and administration. Hallelujah! Now the question is whether this charter will actually have any teeth or whether it will have the same fate as our canary, slowly fading away, never to be heard from again? Read the full post at hospitalleader.org. Dr. Moriates is the assistant dean for health care value and an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas, Austin. “What’s a Cost, Charge, and Price?” by Brad Flansbaum, DO, MPH, MHM “There Is a ‘You’ in Team,” by Tracy Cardin, ACNP-BC, SFHM “‘Harper’s Index’ of Hospital Medicine 2018,” by Jordan Messler, MD, SFHMAlso in The Hospital Leader
