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For years, clinical psychologist Frank T. Masur, PhD, has noticed a growing number of medical professionals who are becoming burned out with their professions and suffering from various forms of depression.
The trend is occurring nationwide, Masur has found, and it is affecting healthcare practitioners across multiple disciplines. Masur suggests medical professionals are sinking under the weight of increased federal regulations and guidelines, and this situation sometimes has stymied healthcare systems rather than improved them.
“We don’t have managed care; we have mangled care and managed cash,” said Masur, director of Health Psychology Associates in Memphis and founder of Excaliber Coaching. “I’m seeing more and more doctors and medical personnel who are spending too much time filling out forms and worrying about billing procedures than actually caring for patients, which is what drew them to the healthcare profession in the first place.”
Masur will address stress and depression among healthcare professionals and discuss coping mechanisms during the upcoming Spring Update conference at Saint Francis Hospital. His workshop entitled PDR: Psychologically Designed Resiliency will focus on helping health care providers strengthen their personal resiliency by increasing optimism, fostering social connectedness, and learning cognitive-behavioral techniques to manage the strain that is the result of stressors.
“Research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania shows that when there is a constant irritant that is neither predictable nor controllable, a condition that is known as learned helplessness occurs,” Masur said. “These are situations that can’t be escaped or avoided and almost always lead to depression and despondency, and I’m seeing it happen in medicine today, from physicians to nurse practitioners to nurses."
One factor in growing levels of frustration among physicians and medical workers is the decreasing amount of time available to diagnose and treat patients. To make up for losses in income due to some insurance providers refusing to pay claims and rising costs of maintaining practices, physicians are increasingly forced to see larger volumes of patients in shorter amounts of time.
The result is diminished patient care and increased pressure on medical professionals to see patients for profit.
“I see more and more doctors going to a VIP practice where they treat a limited number of patients, but that’s not an option for most,” Masur said. “We’re losing some really talented physicians because some of them who could practice 10 or 15 more years or longer are instead opting to retire and get away from all the frustration.”
And just as mental health professionals are seeing increased depression and frustration levels among medical workers, the levels of patients suffering from depression are also rising.
Roland Gray, MD, medical director of the Tennessee Medical Foundation’s Physician’s Health Program in Nashville, said that in the last decade the number of victims of fatal drug overdoses has exceeded that of those who die in car accidents across the state. And increasing numbers of babies are born to mothers who are addicted to prescription narcotics.
“There has been a tendency to overprescribe opiates for a variety of behavioral health problems, and this can lead to serious drug problems,” Gray said. “In some areas you can buy heroin cheaper than a pack of cigarettes, and once the users are hooked that creates a terrible burden on our communities and law enforcement agencies and healthcare systems to try to treat these people.”
Gray will discuss prescription guidelines for pain management at the Saint Francis conference, which runs May 4-6. Also at the event will be David Bienenfeld, MD, attending physician at Summit Behavioral Health in Cincinnati.
Bienenfeld will discuss depression in primary care, which affects up to 10 percent of patients in the U.S.
“We have got to get a better handle on depression and its costs, both directly and indirectly,” Bienenfeld said. “For every dollar spent on direct care to treat depression, there may be $6 or $7 in indirect costs associated with the condition due to patients missing work and suffering from other medical conditions. Depressed patients tend to get sick more and recover more slowly than patients who are not suffering from depression.”
The relationship between mental health and physical health is being studied by the U.S. Senate, with lawmakers dealing with a bipartisan effort to address the issue. The Health Reform Act of 2016, which the Senate is set to vote on this spring, is being promoted by Tennessee’s Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate committee on healthcare, and Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
The legislation aims to increase mental healthcare across the country and provide more training for healthcare professionals.
And that’s a step in the right direction for Masur and his colleagues.
“One out of four adults will suffer from depression in his or her lifetime, and even more will suffer from depression as a secondary diagnosis,” Masur said. “There is a significant relationship between mental illness and physical illness, and we have to do more to treat these conditions. Doctors, employers, insurance providers and patients themselves have to gain a better understanding of this relationship and work together to gain more effective and affordable treatment.”
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