Burnout Officially Classified as a Disease
World Health Organisation officially classifies burnout as a disease, and doctors are particularly vulnerable. If you are a specialist doctor, or married to one, and finding it hard to balance the demands of private practice with family life, you are not alone.
Tomasz Forfa of the Doctors’ Collective has identified that burnout among doctors is reaching ‘plague proportions’ in Australia. He states that ‘recent suicides among doctors and medical students are just one symptom of a bigger underlying problem’.
‘Doctors are missing out on time with their young children, their marriages are suffering, their health is slipping, and many are starting to wonder if it’s all worth it.’ (For further reading, please click here.)
Burnout will diminish your quality of life and may affect your family too. It can lead to ongoing mental and physical illnesses. It is so serious that WHO classified it as an official medical diagnosis during the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May (see here).
Burnout happens as a result of one or more of the following working conditions:
- an overwhelming workload
- limited control
- unrewarding work
- unfair work
- work that conflicts with values
- lack of community in the workplace.
Do any of these sound familiar to you? If so, it might be time to protect your wellbeing and your family’s.
What can you do to prevent burnout?
There are Band-Aid solutions. You could take a holiday, change jobs, or work part-time. But it won’t really change anything.
A long-term, sustainable solution is needed, which will help you now and in the future, delivering professional and financial growth, fulfilling work and a healthy income.
You don’t need to do it all on your own!
The traditional private practice model of the doctor doing it all themselves is simply inefficient. Running a business puts additional pressure on the doctor right at the point when they could really do without it. They get tied up in mundane tasks for which they are not trained, such as admin and invoicing.
For decades now, businesses have been outsourcing the functions that are not core to their businesses. They no longer employ security guards; they hire a company to supply security services. They employ third-party resources so that they can concentrate on using their skills to create revenue, rather than tie up valuable people to manage work for which they are overqualified.
Now doctors can do the same.
Co-working could protect you from burnout
Co-working models work. Specialist Hub brings the co-working model to the medical industry, offering you the independence of a private practice, along with shared facilities and systems to ensure cost efficiencies and a dedicated team to ensure professionalism. It saves you time, money and effort. It lets you get on with being a doctor and not drown in admin.
The model means you can hand over the mechanics of running of your business, reducing your workload whilst maintaining control of how your practice is run. But the biggest advantage of the co-working model is the community within it, which provides support, mentorship, guidance and assistance.
Put your own oxygen mask on first
Your practice is nothing without you. You need to prioritise your health and wellbeing and avoid unnecessary stress and low-value work. If you burn yourself out, the road to recovery could be arduous and costly, affecting your finances, health and family.
If you are interested in further details on how we can help you achieve work-life balance and help your private practice thrive, please visit our website and contact us on info@specialisthub.co or call 02 8986 4574.
About Author
