Avoiding outpatient burnout
- Thread starter kookfu
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- Attending Physician
Getting away from employed jobs. Doing PP.
Having a quality assistant / front desk.
Not taking UHC or other insurance that routinely scat on you.
Having a quality assistant / front desk.
Not taking UHC or other insurance that routinely scat on you.
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- Attending Physician
Some things that help for me (whether in private practice or employed):
-Do 90 minute intakes and 30-minute follow ups
-Build in admin time, even if it is a lunch hour. Try to use time efficiently so that you can typically go for a walk, scroll SDN, or do whatever you want in that downtime.
-Manage your panel so that you have schedule openings for urgent cases. Having several acute patients with no way to manage them except working them in before or after-hours is stressful (and so is ignoring the issue and dealing with a bad outcome).
-If you have a niche interest consider building a practice geared toward that (for example, psychosis, trauma, substance abuse). If in private practice, consider developing a therapy panel (interesting work that decreases the overall panel size significantly).
-Maintain good boundaries. Avoid doing lots of out-of-session work or after hours work. For example, try to fill out paperwork with the patient in session where they can provide additional info and clarification.
I also recommend varying things up. If you have some time dedicated to another activity like research, leadership, or clinical care in another setting that can break up the "grind."
If I worked only outpatient clinical, I would do 0.8 FTE and work four eight-hour days if finances allowed. I think five days of a close to fully-booked schedule would likely burn me out. With a slower, gentler pace I find outpatient work to be pretty rewarding and probably the best practice setting in psychiatry.
-Do 90 minute intakes and 30-minute follow ups
-Build in admin time, even if it is a lunch hour. Try to use time efficiently so that you can typically go for a walk, scroll SDN, or do whatever you want in that downtime.
-Manage your panel so that you have schedule openings for urgent cases. Having several acute patients with no way to manage them except working them in before or after-hours is stressful (and so is ignoring the issue and dealing with a bad outcome).
-If you have a niche interest consider building a practice geared toward that (for example, psychosis, trauma, substance abuse). If in private practice, consider developing a therapy panel (interesting work that decreases the overall panel size significantly).
-Maintain good boundaries. Avoid doing lots of out-of-session work or after hours work. For example, try to fill out paperwork with the patient in session where they can provide additional info and clarification.
I also recommend varying things up. If you have some time dedicated to another activity like research, leadership, or clinical care in another setting that can break up the "grind."
If I worked only outpatient clinical, I would do 0.8 FTE and work four eight-hour days if finances allowed. I think five days of a close to fully-booked schedule would likely burn me out. With a slower, gentler pace I find outpatient work to be pretty rewarding and probably the best practice setting in psychiatry.
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- Resident [Any Field]
Work hardest early in your career like first decade then naturally you can scale back. Nothing beats this. This is what my attending told me and too many around me were crusiing around doing 20-25 hr work weeks for a few years post residency now they are in late 30s/early 40s realizing they should have done more early on and its been more challenging to get high paying jobs vs when they were in highest demand when first out.
Compound working leads to compounded investing which leads to sub 50 FIRE and work for fun lifestyle. Good luck it def wasn't easy but 0 regrets working my tail off then the stock market further compounded all that so a little luck never hurts.
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