Too much work and no rest can make you an apathetic doctor.
Empathy is an important part of every patient-doctor relationship. Empathy is what makes a patient feel that their doctor truly cares and is looking after their best interests.
But life as a GP can be tough, with long hours and stressful moments with difficult patients. There are also other factors that add up to the levels of stress, such as balancing financial needs with patient care.
Many doctors try to ‘walk-it-off’ and see the next patient, but sometime enough is enough and doctors get a toll from work-related burnout.
GPs share their experience
In a recent article published in the RACGP website, Dr Hester Wilson, a GP and Chair of RACGP Specific Interests Addiction Medicine, share her experience with burnout. Some 10 years ago she almost quit general practice, due to the high levels of stress and burnout she was experiencing.
Dr Wilson recalls one occasion when she has been seeing multiple patients with complex mental and physical health issues. She was also tired from being up overnight with her sick pre-school child. Then, a new patient shows up, with no discharge letter, no plan in place, taking ‘off-label’ medications prescribed by a specialist and, to make things worse, having psychotic behaviours.
To properly care for this patient, Dr Wilson recalls she had to reschedule or transfer her other patients to other doctors and spent almost three full hours helping this patient.
‘In the end I sorted something out. ‘But it was at that point that I went, “I just can’t do this job anymore. I just cannot do this. This is too hard”,’ she said in a RACGP news article.
A common theme among GPs
Dr Wilson is not the only clinician to feel this way. A recent study from Canada studied the experience of GPs managing patients with severe pain due to osteoarthritis, who used opioids to control their pain.
The study found that 45% of GPs reported feeling frustration, exhaustion and compromised job satisfaction – all symptoms of burnout.
‘Burnout – a syndrome that is characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and low sense of personal accomplishment – has been associated with a higher frequency of medical errors, lapses in professionalism, impeded learning, problematic alcohol use and suicidal ideation,’ the authors wrote.
The study also found a statistically significant negative correlation between empathy and patient-related burnout. These results are backed by previous studies, like a 2017 review study that identified eight research studies reporting empirical support for a negative relationship between empathy and burnout.
Another important factor is isolation. Dr Wilson explains that you can be part of a large general practice clinic, but remain mostly isolated, due to the pressing demands of handling too many patients.
“You can be part of a busy practice and assisting people, talking to people, organising things, all that kind of stuff, but not actually have that kind of human contact which is about you as a human being interacting with your colleagues,” she said in the RACGP news article. ‘Particularly if you’re working with patients who have really complex issues it can feel really lonely, that you’re on your own trying to manage impossible situations that you can’t solve,” she added.
Both feeling isolated and tired contribute to developing a lack of empathy towards patients, but the trick might be to learn to identify the point where you need to take a break and re-charge.
Taking care of yourself
The take home message is the GPs need to be proactive in identifying and managing their levels of isolation and burnout. Taking a break from practice, going out and about over a long weekend, and taking care of your emotional needs is an important first step.
For Dr Wilson, GP support groups with her colleagues helped her overcome the feelings of isolation, whereas taking more breaks, doing exercise, eating well, and reducing work hours all helped improve her emotional wellbeing.
“It was a real wake-up call for me that I needed to do things differently. I love my work and I love my life; it’s making sure that you get the balance right in your life,” she said in the RACGP news article.