Could burnout and anti-burnout initiatives championed by healthcare institutions be the healthcare equivalent of gaslighting?
"Gaslighting" refers to the act of psychologically manipulating someone to question their own sanity, in order to gain some advantage. Intentional or not, it carries significant repercussions for its targets, which in this case may be clinicians in our struggling healthcare system.
The term comes from the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a woman's husband regularly dims and brightens the gaslights in their home while he sneaks around in the attic, searching for hidden valuables. When she asks why the gaslights flicker, he insists that they have not changed intensity and that she is only imagining it. The woman's husband invalidates her perceptions and leads her to doubt her sanity.
A similar phenomenon is happening today to clinicians regarding the distress they experience as a result of the double binds imposed by the competing allegiances inherent in our healthcare system. Pro-forma surveys, used to identify burnout in other populations and adjusted for healthcare, have been widely used and revealed striking levels of distress in the medical profession. But too often, those results were not an invitation to explore more deeply and to consider whether characterizing doctors' struggles as burnout was accurate.
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Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.
Cite this: Wendy Dean, Austin Charles Dean, Simon G. Talbot. Why 'Burnout' Is the Wrong Term for Physician Suffering - Medscape - Jul 23, 2019.
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COMMENTARY
Why 'Burnout' Is the Wrong Term for Physician Suffering
Wendy Dean, MD; Austin Charles Dean; Simon G. Talbot, MD
DisclosuresJuly 23, 2019
Could burnout and anti-burnout initiatives championed by healthcare institutions be the healthcare equivalent of gaslighting?
"Gaslighting" refers to the act of psychologically manipulating someone to question their own sanity, in order to gain some advantage. Intentional or not, it carries significant repercussions for its targets, which in this case may be clinicians in our struggling healthcare system.
The term comes from the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a woman's husband regularly dims and brightens the gaslights in their home while he sneaks around in the attic, searching for hidden valuables. When she asks why the gaslights flicker, he insists that they have not changed intensity and that she is only imagining it. The woman's husband invalidates her perceptions and leads her to doubt her sanity.
A similar phenomenon is happening today to clinicians regarding the distress they experience as a result of the double binds imposed by the competing allegiances inherent in our healthcare system. Pro-forma surveys, used to identify burnout in other populations and adjusted for healthcare, have been widely used and revealed striking levels of distress in the medical profession. But too often, those results were not an invitation to explore more deeply and to consider whether characterizing doctors' struggles as burnout was accurate.
Medscape Business of Medicine © 2019 WebMD, LLC
Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.
Cite this: Wendy Dean, Austin Charles Dean, Simon G. Talbot. Why 'Burnout' Is the Wrong Term for Physician Suffering - Medscape - Jul 23, 2019.
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Authors and Disclosures
Authors and Disclosures
Author(s)
Wendy Dean, MD
Psychiatrist; Vice President of Business Development and Senior Medical Officer, Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland
Disclosure: Wendy Dean, MD, has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Austin Charles Dean
Linguistics student, Columbia University, New York, New York
Disclosure: Austin Charles Dean has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Simon G. Talbot, MD
Reconstructive plastic surgeon, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Disclosure: Simon G. Talbot, MD, has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.