Broken health care system is causing rampant burnout among doctors, nurses | Hacker News Reader

Broken health care system is causing rampant burnout among doctors, nurses

m.sfgate.com

34 pointsspking5 comments

My wife is a nurse, and the lack of well thought out scheduling contributes greatly to this. It seems like many systems lack any logic behind creating their shift schedules. The long 12+ hr shifts combined with poor weekend structuring for night shift staff make it extremely hard to focus on self-care and your relationships. If it's "your weekend" you work Saturday and Sunday night, and have to consequently sleep most of the Saturday morning and afternoon to be ready. If it's not "your weekend" you're on the schedule for Friday night, causing you to have to sleep most of Saturday. It's a lose-lose either way.

Combine this with anti-union practices, dangerous staffing shortages, and a general anti-employee attitude, and no wonder you see so much burnout.

The leeches in the healthcare environment (insurance companies, executives & administration) take too much away from the people who do the actual work (doctors, nurses, janitors, and other support staff).

The ratio of doctors/nurses to patients in 3rd world countries is 1:300. 1 doctor for every 300 patients. In the united states the ratio is higher than 1:1000. Real healthcare reform would address this issue. Obamacare, Medicare for all and other proposed legislation do absolutely nothing to fix these problems, one reason why they're doomed to failure from the onset.

This a real issue. The American Medical Association lobbies to artificially limit the number of residency spots funded by the federal government. No change in compensation structure will change the fact that every dermatologist in my city is booked solid until next June, but allowing more of them to be trained might.

What’s interesting is that the market seems to be coping with this by giving more responsibility and autonomy to mid-level providers like PAs and CRNAs - and tons of physicians are livid about it. As a patient, for many health issues I’d prefer to be diagnosed and treated by someone with the rigorous education and training of a board-certified physician rather than a mid-level whose degree includes less than 1 year of clinical experience.

Just change the headline to "broken health care system" to "broken economic system" and "doctors, nurses" to "all employees" and it'd be even more accurate. Most jobs seem to try and drain every drop of energy they can get from their staff, instead of giving them realistic workloads that are sustainable. I feel like as a society we've crossed the Rubicon from being efficient to being downright sociopathic and self-destructive. I guess this is the end result of unchecked capitalism. You definitely don't see the same extremes in Europe, but at the same time there is less opportunity. Maybe that's a worthwhile trade off?

The question then is who is the opportunity benefiting? It seems like one class of workers are being squeezed for the benefit of middle managers, administrators, and above. Of course businesses would prefer that over Europe's higher taxes and welfare.

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