Preventing Physician Burnout: Curing the Chaos and Returning Joy to the Practice of Medicine

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated burnout for clinicians and administrators alike, heightening the need for this practical guide that provides a comprehensive approach to empowering physicians while ensuring organizational resilience. In this second edition of Preventing Physician Burnout: Curing the Chaos and Returning Joy to the Practice of Medicine, doctors Paul DeChant and Diane Shannon define burnout, explore the consequences for physicians, patients, and the health care system, identify the underlying causes that are fueling the burnout epidemic, and provide case studies with specific interventions that have demonstrated success in healing the broken clinical workplace.Based on their experience and extensive interviews with experts in burnout, health care, and Lean management, they give voice to patient advocates, burnout researchers, leaders of health care organizations, and the physicians themselves. DeChant and Shannon also share examples of strategies that hospitals and physician practices across the United States are using to address the root causes of burnout among physicians, including action items for preventing burnout and curbing the crisis.“It is hard to see how we can create the health care system we want and need on the backs of joyless and unengaged doctors. This well-written, practical book offers the prescription we need to address this crisis.” Robert Wachter, MD, author of The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age