HEALTH: Healthy doctors make happy doctors
Ottawa physician was in town last week to speak at a conference that attracted over 1,300 resident physicians from around the world. Dr. Derek Puddester has co-edited a handbook focused on physician health.
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Updated: October 07, 2009 12:23 PM
Physician health handbook aims to keep doctors in profession
Derek Puddester remembers the punishing training he went through to become a doctor.
Although it was an exciting time, he also recalls the day he was too tired to work. With two residents absent from his team, Puddester was working back-to-back 36-hour shifts. By the fourth week he knew he couldn't do it anymore.
"I just looked at my staff and said 'I am so exhausted, I have to go to sleep, I don't think I'm safe to work.'" Instead of supporting him, a colleague chastised him, saying that was nonsense and they needed him.
Puddester walked away. For months he felt he was a failure, until another colleague took him aside to say he'd done the right thing.
Ten years later, Puddester teaches doctors in training at the University of Ottawa how to avoid similar situations and how to take care of themselves. He wants to make sure doctors don't have to go through what he did.
He was in Victoria recently to give a presentation at an international conference on resident doctor education, which attracted over 1,300 physicians from around the world.
At the conference, Puddester launched a guidebook he and two others edited on how physicians can stay healthy. With submissions from doctors across the country, the manual presents practical solutions to timely conundrums, like how to manage fatigue, how to sustain personal relationships or how to deal with on-the-job ethical problems.
"The goal of our work is to make Canadian health care as safe for patients as possible," Puddester said, adding the old-fashioned thinking that doctors should just soldier on doesn't work anymore. "There are lots who just can't suck it up or they suck it up and actually don't learn anything about they experience they've just had."
He points out that studies show just under 50 per cent of Canadian doctors are in advanced stage of burnout, 25 per cent report being depressed and just under two per cent are actively suicidal. With a critical shortage of doctors in Canada, Puddester said we can't afford to lose any. As such, it's vital to give them skills so they want to stay in their profession.
"We need to put some effort into keeping the ones we've got and keeping them on their game."
Simple things like teaching physicians how to efficiently hand over over case files at the end of shifts can result in time saved. That time can be spent decompressing after tough days, rather than making those tough days longer, he said.
"They're simple ideas, but simple things often aren't done. Sometimes we disrespect the simple because we're looking for complexity."
Andrew Clarke is the executive director of a provincial association dedicated to keeping doctors healthy. The Physician Health Program of British Columbia will co-host the first Canadian conference on physician health, Oct. 15-16 in Vancouver.
Clarke said Puddester's handbook is not only a timely teaching tool, but a necessary one.
"So much of the curriculum in medical training emphasizes how important it is to always consider your patients first, which is true," he said. "But you can extend that too far and not look after yourself and then you can get into trouble. So it is important to have an explicit resource that says it's OK to look after yourself too. In fact it's a good thing."
CanMeds Physician Health Guide: A Practical Handbook for Physician Health and Well-being, is available to physicians from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
vmoreau@saanichnews.com
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