At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantiners around the globe made noise with bells, claps, and even saxophones to acknowledge healthcare heroes. The rhetoric deeming healthcare workers “heroes” may be intended as an expression of gratitude, but it sends another, more damaging message: that healthcare workers are impermeable, even superhuman. Unlike Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, many physicians don’t have the time or energy to lead double lives.
“As a physician, [work-life balance is] always a little bit of a challenge, and as a woman in medicine, too, I think it’s always something to be mindful of,” Susan Bleasdale, MD, chief quality officer for the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System and assistant vice chancellor for quality and patient safety for University of Illinois Chicago, told Medscape Medical News. During the lockdown, she and her husband — an internist — had no choice but to leave their three teenagers alone at home while they spent countless days, evenings, and weekends at work. “During the pandemic…[it] was a challenge to make sure the needs of my children were met, and [to maintain] the balance of my job and my husband’s job, because we both needed to be seeing patients,” she said.
Dr Susan Bleasdale
Long hours and high levels of pressure and stress leave many healthcare workers with a shortage of time and energy to maintain full, healthy personal lives. An imbalance of work and life can affect a healthcare professional’s performance at work, sense of well-being within the workplace, social life outside of work, and physical and mental health. Since the onset of the pandemic, the challenges of work-life balance and burnout among healthcare professionals have intensified and lingered. The effects of COVID-19 and the “Great Resignation” have left the healthcare industry at a tipping point, and the future of the industry depends on the measures being taken to ensure a better quality of life for physicians moving forward.
Halee Fischer-Wright
Still, potential solutions to this problem remain nebulous. A May 2021 study by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) found that only 14% of healthcare institutions had a plan for dealing with physician burnout, while 86% do not.
“While I can say I’ve heard of quite a bit of creative activity,” MGMA President and CEO Halee Fischer-Wright, who wrote the 2017 book “Back to Balance: The Art, Science, and Business of Medicine,” told Medscape
