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SAN DIEGO – Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy called for a culture of “emotional well-being” to curb physician burnout and reduce the number of distressed physicians who take their lives each year.
“I think we have to have a focus on emotional well-being from the time people get into medical school,” he said during a press briefing at the annual meeting of the Society of Hospital Medicine. “We’re not just talking about trying to build a couple of intervention programs where people meet in small groups once a week. This is about shifting perspective in culture, recognizing that emotional well-being is an essential tool for clinicians to be able to do their jobs well.”
Dr. Murthy expressed concern for medical students who enter the profession “with the highest of ideals. But once they get into medicine, they run into challenges and obstacles. They find that the system isn’t always set up to allow them to live up to those ideals.”
Those challenges, he continued, “can wear on people’s emotional well-being. It can lead them to a sense of futility. It can increase burnout, and it can tax people to the point where, sadly, in some cases, people are driven to harm themselves.”
Dr. Murthy also is the cofounder of VISIONS, an HIV/AIDS education program in India and the United States, which he led for 8 years.
The video associated with this article is no longer available on this site. Please view all of our videos on the MDedge YouTube channel
SAN DIEGO – Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy called for a culture of “emotional well-being” to curb physician burnout and reduce the number of distressed physicians who take their lives each year.
“I think we have to have a focus on emotional well-being from the time people get into medical school,” he said during a press briefing at the annual meeting of the Society of Hospital Medicine. “We’re not just talking about trying to build a couple of intervention programs where people meet in small groups once a week. This is about shifting perspective in culture, recognizing that emotional well-being is an essential tool for clinicians to be able to do their jobs well.”
Dr. Murthy expressed concern for medical students who enter the profession “with the highest of ideals. But once they get into medicine, they run into challenges and obstacles. They find that the system isn’t always set up to allow them to live up to those ideals.”
Those challenges, he continued, “can wear on people’s emotional well-being. It can lead them to a sense of futility. It can increase burnout, and it can tax people to the point where, sadly, in some cases, people are driven to harm themselves.”
Dr. Murthy also is the cofounder of VISIONS, an HIV/AIDS education program in India and the United States, which he led for 8 years.
The video associated with this article is no longer available on this site. Please view all of our videos on the MDedge YouTube channel
SAN DIEGO – Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy called for a culture of “emotional well-being” to curb physician burnout and reduce the number of distressed physicians who take their lives each year.
“I think we have to have a focus on emotional well-being from the time people get into medical school,” he said during a press briefing at the annual meeting of the Society of Hospital Medicine. “We’re not just talking about trying to build a couple of intervention programs where people meet in small groups once a week. This is about shifting perspective in culture, recognizing that emotional well-being is an essential tool for clinicians to be able to do their jobs well.”
Dr. Murthy expressed concern for medical students who enter the profession “with the highest of ideals. But once they get into medicine, they run into challenges and obstacles. They find that the system isn’t always set up to allow them to live up to those ideals.”
Those challenges, he continued, “can wear on people’s emotional well-being. It can lead them to a sense of futility. It can increase burnout, and it can tax people to the point where, sadly, in some cases, people are driven to harm themselves.”
Dr. Murthy also is the cofounder of VISIONS, an HIV/AIDS education program in India and the United States, which he led for 8 years.
