Story Rounds inspires real talk by doctors about their toughest work

Story Rounds inspires real talk by doctors about their toughest work 
Standford Medicine - SCOPE Beyond the Headlines; by Mark Conley; 6/27/24 
Jay Shah, MD, took a deep breath as he stood on the Berg Hall stage and looked out across the crowd. It was made up of 150 of his Stanford Medicine peers, some of them longtime mentors and collaborators. ... Shah had been chosen to lead off the latest rendition of Story Rounds, the WellMD and WellPhD and the Medical Humanities and Arts Program (MedMuse) co-sponsored live storytelling program -- a safe place for MDs, clinical students and residents to share with their colleagues. ... Shah's tale was an impassioned 13-minute story of metamorphosis: Of going from a doctor determined to trudge forward without self-reflection, watching it destroy his marriage and spiral his mental health, to one who recognized the harm in not processing the difficult situations and emotions that come with the job -- such as the pain, guilt and loneliness of losing a patient and feeling like it was all his fault. His was the first of five stories that evening, delivered in a personal storytelling format inspired by Public Radio Exchange's podcast The Moth. It encapsulated a growing movement toward doctors talking openly about burnout, stress and mental health -- and trying to support one another, whether they're a wide-eyed first-year resident or a veteran health care leader like Shah.
Editor's Notes: Physician burnout is common cause for the rise in physician resignations, unionizations, and strikes. Today's EMR technology has eliminated much of the humanizing that hospice and palliative physicians and other interdisciplinary team members experienced in regular, collaborative team meetings, through years past. How can new needs for productivity (empowered by crucial technology for timely, shared documentation) be paired with the deeply human needs of debriefing, support, reflection, and resilience through one's professional community? And, how do you ensure the patient/family's privacy in such storytelling? Ask your physicians (and nurse practitioners) what they experience, need, and can be done to support them better.