Emotional exhaustion is one piece of burnout. It is one of the physical manifestations. It can also include a lack of motivation, absentmindedness, apathy, headaches, nervousness, difficulty concentrating, irrational anger, increased cynicism or pessimism, a sense of dread, and depression. You may notice changes in your behavior at work, such as a failure to meet deadlines, lower commitment to the organization, or more absences.

Yes, I went there. We need to heal our relationships. I suspect that each and every one of us has people that we have blocked, or unfriended, either on social media or in real life, over the pandemic or politics in the past 12 to 24 months. If you haven’t, then congratulations! Good for you. For the rest of us, it is time to work on patching up those relationships.

I like traveling where I stay in 4 and 5 star hotels. Also bling. My kids, they seemed to like stimulating activities. From that information, I was pretty sure that my kids were Action as well. My son was the one that wanted to hike an active volcano, for crying out loud. My daughter shaved her head for attention when she was in high school! Those are pretty Action characteristics. I was pretty comfortable I had this nailed down and I knew their codes. I spoke to them in “Action.”

Is it attracting patients, partners and staff? Or is it driving them away? It would be good to know. Your cultural voice may be mis-identifying some providers as dysfunctional when, in fact, they simply aren’t being heard. It may be hiding members of the C-suite who are counterproductive to your mission statement. Outside of Healthcare, effective communication is considered a cornerstone of corporate culture and corporate training-both in your backyard and around the world-for happy and productive partners and staff. Companies spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars annually

they should come right out and state that bullying is a driver of burn out. They haven’t done that. 400 physicians a year are committing suicide. And all we have is a program for organizations with more than 100 physicians, and a promise from organizations with less than 100 providers. Not a promise to the smaller organizations, but a promise from the small organizations. None of this is very well-defined, and I’m not sure where they’re going with us. More importantly, I’m not sure the AMA knows where they’re going with this. We need answers today.

As you know, burnout is at an all-time high. I wanted to ask you, what are you doing to help your colleagues and coworkers address this issue? Are you even aware of what you, specifically, can do for them? Do you feel as if there’s nothing that you as an individual can do?