Top 4 Challenges Nurses Faced in 2020

The ongoing pandemic has brought forth many challenges to nurses, but has also led to constant opportunity and innovation. Here are 4 of the greatest challenges faced by nurses in the year 2020.

9 Essential Skills Medical Schools Don’t Teach and How to Overcome the Knowledge Deficit

Medical schools teach medical content well, but they miss the mark when it comes to teaching the practical side of medicine. Questions like How should I manage my income? What should I look for in a contract? or What happens when I’m sued? are left unanswered. Physicians generally learn these lessons on the job and make avoidable mistakes along the way.

The following are nine skills I wish I would have learned before leaving medical school.

Why This Physician Isn’t Burned Out

I am an emergency physician.

I provide care to abusive patients via a clunky EMR. I work nights, weekends and holidays. Because of unnecessary bureaucratic tasks, simple aspects of my job are cumbersome and take longer than they should. 

And I am not burned out…

Resident/Medical Student Burnout and How to Fight It

Articles describing physician burnout have dominated the medical reporting landscape recently. The problem is widespread, as many as 44% of physicians met the criteria for burnout in recent studies. The consequences are severe – physicians complete suicide at twice the rate of the general population. While this epidemic is being recognized in attending physicians, the roots of the epidemic have not been fully addressed. Often, by the time that physicians have been worn down to contemplating or attempting suicide, they have been dealing with burnout and depression for much longer. The roots of this current epidemic, and the key to effectively preventing it, lie in the medical training pipeline.

When Nursing Feels Like Too Much

Nursing is a challenging field and will likely remain so for many years to come. If you’re planning on staying in the field long-term, it’s imperative that you perform self-care on a regular basis. Read this article for tips on recognizing and preventing work-related stress, burnout, anxiety, and depression.

Losing Steam as an RN: How to Get out of the Rut

You might have become a nurse for several reasons. Maybe you dig science or have a strong desire to help people. Whatever your reasons for becoming an RN, you may be surprised if one day you don’t feel the same enthusiasm for your career.

How Physician Choices Can Lead to Burnout

An impossible task would be to find a physician who has never wished to rewind time, even if just for a brief moment long enough to make a different decision. Patients are increasingly complicated and decision making cumbersome and pressured by the scarcity of time.  As a generality, physicians pride themselves on their decision-making prowess, but this same skill can be clouded by ego and error…

Life in the trenches is difficult at best. Medicine continues to advance at an exponential rate, but physician burnout remains constant. Who will step forward with a solution before all the healers are destroyed?

Can Physicians Really Have It All? Work-life Balance in the Modern Era of Medicine

Whether or not physician work-life balance is possible, it is highly coveted. Younger generations of doctors (those 35 years old and younger) and an increasingly female workforce have spearheaded this movement towards balance. Women make up about half of all medical students and residents and many – along with an increasing number of their male colleagues – value raising a family and pursuing other life interests. While older generations accepted that the calling to become a physician would limit other areas of life, and the medical profession overall has a poor record of self-care, times are changing, and this newer generation is looking for a change.

What are My Options if I’m Tired of Medicine?

There are many op-eds stating how you can leave medicine and make almost as much money doing other jobs. I don’t find this to be true at all. Yes, there could be a few jobs that meet the level of income from practicing medicine, but they are few and difficult to get. Be realistic about the loss in income when you leave medicine. Plan ahead for this change. If it were easy to leave medicine and retain the income, a significantly higher percentage would be leaving.

Why I Still Love Medicine

Even though the media often portrays physicians as burned out and barely hanging on, this is not the reality for most who work in healthcare. Each physician has his or her reasons for choosing medicine, and I wanted to share a few of my own…