Fern EPC Coaching Helps Physicians and Physician Leaders Thrive

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Brad Fern, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Of all the types of coaching out there, Immunity to Change (ITC) coaching is particularly well suited to support doctors and healthcare executives. As the name implies, ITC helps individuals and teams to change and manage change. Like other coaching methods, ITC provides caring support and empowers individuals and teams to reclaim misdirected cognitive and emotional energies.

But unlike some other coaching methods, ITC coaching provides something far more useful for today’s physicians and healthcare executives. ITC trends physicians and physician leaders toward higher levels of adult development, supporting them as they grow into the kind of thinking complexity needed to navigate today’s incredibly complex healthcare world.

Physicians nowadays endure a staggering level of complexity. The average doctor spends half of their workday and an extra 28 hours a month fulfilling electronic heath record duties. There is a shortage of doctors in some specialties, and by 2032 there will be an even more serious shortage of doctors. Levels of physician depression continue to increase, and healthcare organizations are finding themselves having to address issues like physician fatigue, stress, and burnout. The latter alone is a serious problem: over 40% of physicians show at least one symptom of burnout; that burnout costs the US healthcare system a whopping $4.6 billion each year. Eighty three percent of clinicians, clinical leaders, and healthcare executives consider physician burnout a serious or moderate problem.

There isn’t one single cause for physician burnout. A variety of factors impact people in a variety of ways. Hospitals are consolidating at a dizzying rate, healthcare has become a political football, and the horizon is lined with game changers like telemedicine, the use of APPs, and drugstores expanding into healthcare delivery. No wonder physician leaders are stressed. Then add excessive workloads, work/life imbalance, cognitive dissonance, and too much clerical work; all contributors to physician stress. One survey respondent singled out the corporatization of medicine: “We are not a corporate culture. Medicine is a practice and tying a physician to a corporate model is the one driving force that leads to burnout.”

Physicians tend to operate at a level of adult development ITC coaches call the “Self-Authoring Mind.” The Self-Authoring Mind values achievement and drives forward. It tolerates ambiguity and paradox, but generally as a means to attain its goals. It prioritizes autonomy and mastery, has a highly developed sense of agency, and tends to be defined by its own internal authority. Sound familiar?

Not all physicians are born Self-Authored, but many end up that way, nonetheless. As children, many were quiet, studious, self-motivated, and heavily invested in academic pursuits. In college, when the rest of us were playing Frisbee or Hacky Sack outdoors, most budding physicians were slaving away in their internships or residencies “where 80-hour weeks are the norm.” Throughout their early careers, physicians are taught to apply scientifically based, ordered thinking to the problems laid before them. They are continuously challenged to find repeatable and predictable correlations between stimuli and outcomes, and they are recognized and rewarded for doing so. Rational choice and intentional capacity are the foundational psychological tools for physicians, some of which were the Self-Authoring strengths required to thrive in the healthcare industry of old. But the healthcare context has changed. It’s far more complex. The traditional strengths alone won’t necessarily do.

Healthcare Organizations are creating many programs to support their physicians. Some are streamlining EHRs to reduce screen time. Some are improving communication and management skills of their point-of-care leaders, still others are implementing wellness programs that include meditation and yoga. ITC coaching can be a valuable addition to these efforts. There are too many “agents of influence” to rely on technical solutions alone. ITC coaching empowers physicians and physician leaders to embrace the thinking complexity required to match the complexity they face.

Sources:

Shanafelt, Tait, D., et al., Changes in Burnout and Satisfaction with Work-Life Integration in Physicians and the General US Working Population Between 2011 and 2017, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2019

Ibid.