Matt Gallogly argues physician burnout stems from systemic problems, not personal weakness. Residencies demand 100-120 hour weeks, and insurance-driven care pays pediatricians roughly $29 per office visit with only 5-6 minutes per patient. The system's design erodes doctors' sense of worth and joy in medicine.
Treating people and helping people feel better should be one of the greatest callings out there, and you should have great satisfaction over doing it. But there's a twist: the system doesn't allow you to do what you want to do, and that is spend time with your patients, find out what the root cause is, and help them feel better. Traditionally. What causes the issue with burnout across all, doesn't matter if you're a physician or doesn't matter. You could be a lawyer for all we care, right? But what happens is that when you start to experience burnout, what happens is you're dealing with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and you have a feeling of decreased personal achievement. Okay? So let's kind of break each one of these down and let's just kind of examine this first part. We're gonna talk about how we're gonna examine what's causing this, and we all know what's causing it, but we're gonna dig deep into that. And then what we're going to do is we're going to spend the large part of our time as to how to get rid of it, how to get over the burnout, and how to feel joy about being in medicine again. Because quite frankly, you know, treating people and helping people feel better should be one of the greatest callings out there, and you should have great satisfaction over doing it. The reality is, is the reasons why you're experiencing burnout is because of the industry. So let's just take a look at this. Here's what we do know is that Doctors traditionally work the hardest, longest hours. I'm always amazed when I talk with my clients about the number of hours that you all worked in residency. Well, it's actually a very depersonalizing and dehumanizing process. Now, I'm not trying to make you feel like you're a victim or anything like that. I'm just, I'm just being real honest, right? Like, let's just face facts. The whole process of becoming a doctor is designed to just teach you everything that's going to contribute to to your burnout, right? So what you're— what happens is that you learn to work long hours, to put your personal desires on the back burner. You put everything in your life on hold. You put your life on hold of falling in love or starting a family or buying a house or all of these things while the rest of your friends are out there enjoying life and doing all of these things. You're working 100, 120 hours a week because you have this incredible calling to serve mankind. By being a doctor, right? But there's a twist. The system doesn't allow you to do what you want to do, and that is spend time with your patients, find out what the root cause is, and help them feel better. I mean, the system doesn't allow you to do it. The system is designed specifically to dehumanize you. And the reason why the system is designed to do that is because Of insurance-based care. Okay, now let's take a look at a traditional— let's say, you know, pediatricians. They have one of the largest burnout rates. Well, pediatricians— and I have a couple clients that are recovering pediatricians— you know, they make like $29 an office visit. There's a reason why they only get to spend 5 or 6 minutes with the patient. Now, this is all kind of standard information. I have clients of mine that are OB-GYNs that get paid $500 for a vaginal delivery. You've been completely dehumanized. You've been told at every step of the way that you're not worth it. Your skills aren't worth it. Your intelligence isn't worth it. Your sacrifices have not been worth it. I mean, could you imagine a lawyer making these kind of sacrifices and coming out and only charging $75 an hour? I mean, that's essentially what you're doing, right? You have way more training than a lawyer, and quite frankly, many of you are smarter than lawyers. Well, the whole point of this is that the whole system is designed to burn you out. Now, I don't know if they're necessarily— I mean, it wouldn't make any sense that they would actually be doing it to specifically burn you out, but there's the working within the system is not gonna give you the ability to no longer be burnt out or feel like you're no longer valued. Hope you like this. If you did, give us a big thumbs up. Share this with other friends. Rate us, give us 5 stars, subscribe, give us a thumbs up on the video, whatever it is, and come back and listen more. This has been Matt Gallogly. This is the Practice Profit System podcast, and we look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great day, everybody.
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