DOCTORS need to stop focusing on "guarding their patch" and let other trained health professionals ease their workloads, a former Pharmacy Guild of Australia NSW Branch President believes.
Responding to a study which put the cost of physician burnout in the US at US$4.6 billion per annum, ex-Guild NSW Branch President, Rick Samimi, urged Australian doctors to share the burden of healthcare before they run out of steam.
"Doctors should stop guarding their patch and allow other health professionals, such as pharmacists, optometrists and nurses to treat more minor conditions, and provide service which [would] free up doctors to address more complex diagnostic conditions they are trained to do," he said.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found many doctors suffered burnout due to the impact of the increasing bureaucracy they face in their roles.
Speaking to US broadcaster, NPR (National Public Radio), one of the study's authors, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Lotte Dyrbye said, "Everybody who goes into medicine knows that it's a stressful career and that it's a lot of hard work".
"We want to be able to deliver good quality care to our patients, and our systems get in the way.
"[However], there is a general sense of loss of meaning [to the work]," she said.
Dyrbye warned the US$4.6 billion estimated cost of burnout was conservative, only accounting for lost hours and turnover, but not factoring the cost of potential malpractice cases and other indirect costs of burnout.
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