First aid for doctors with burnout - a new book by Dr Claire Davies.

Dr Claire Davies

This is the first time my Blog has reviewed a book, but Burnout is a huge concern in the ‘Officially Broken’ NHS. As the GMC tells us that many Doctors are leaving the NHS because of Burnout, Claire Davies’ book has arrived at the perfect time.

It is available on Amazon here.

Claire is a GP and Executive Coach. She has been talking a lot of sense about Burnout for some time. Her book is what it says – a First Aid manual for Doctors with Burnout. She describes the familiar triad of inadequate staffing, increasing workload and difficulty providing acceptable care as its pre-cursors.

We do not always recognise our own Burnout until it is too late. Recognising burnout means we can deal with it.  However, dealing with Burnout isn’t enough if we just go back to the same stresses that caused it originally. We need tools to manage the causes of Burnout to prevent it recurring.

Claire talks candidly about her own journey to burnout and how she recovered from it. As an East London GP she was daily overwhelmed by eConsults and inability to devote sufficient time to patients. She became aware that she no longer enjoyed her job. She was exhausted and sad but unable to take time away as it was ‘not what Doctors did’. Eventually things caught up with her and she (to her embarrassment) was given a sick note. She had to take stock, re-evaluate and learn about herself. She had to discover how to do things differently. Her experiences and learning form the basis of her book.

Claire is now back at work, after learning how to feel positive again. She describes a number of specific ‘First Aid’ tools. Although aimed squarely at Doctors, it is in my opinion a book that everyone who provides frontline Healthcare should buy and read.

You may recognise some of the ingredients of burnout:

·      Intense workload without breaks

·      Performance targets driving practice

·      Unsupportive management with poor leadership skills

·      Distress from being unable to provide adequate care

·      Bullying, harassment, and micro-aggression

·      Medical exceptionalism – a belief that Doctors always ‘cope’

We have high expectations of ourselves as Doctors but find ourselves ruminating on the problems rather than dealing with them. Eventually things just ‘boil over’. Some of us recover from it but others may not. A lot of us just walk away and our skills are lost to the service.

Claire shows us how to understand Burnout – loss of energy, negative thoughts or cynicism towards the job, reduced efficiency – and the mixture of factors that causes it. It is important to recognise burnout ‘before it is too late’; to consider the motivations that first took us into Medicine and reflect on whether these reasons remain valid. She challenges us to rediscover purpose and (possibly) vocation. Personal values are important and allow us to express ourselves in our lives and work. How well are we living to these values?   

Each of us has specific personal strengths in additional to our professional expertise as Doctors. What are we good at, and what strengths do we have that are missing from our work? What would you like to be using less! How are we living and working within our personal and professional boundaries?

Claire’s next chapters take us through - things that wind us up at work (pebbles); negative thinking styles; managing conflict through drama triangles; guilt, shame and moral injury. She concludes with her 5 top tips for burnout. You need to read the book to find what they are!

I recognise that many NHS Practitioners are on a journey to Burnout. Some are there already amd some are back at work facing the same stresses that caused their Burnout originally. Claire’s book is a reminder that as individuals, and as employers, we need to act.

As a Coach myself I understand the value of Coaching as a listening intervention and the book is a very useful guide for Coaches as well as Doctors experiencing burnout. I will certainly use it in my own Coaching practice.

Wes Streeting, our new Secretary of State for Health, has asked Lord Darzi to undertake a review of the NHS. No doubt this will consider structure and funding, transfer of resources and all the usual strategies that have been tried before. But I can see no better investment in the future of the NHS staff than to establish a national Coaching service, external to Trusts, which offers top class Executive Coaching to senior staff of all professional disciplines.

It is the brokenness of the Staff in the NHS that need addressing - fixing NHS staff fixes the service. There are many trained and experienced Executive Coaches just waiting for the call to help.