By Evan Falchuk
A new study out of Israel (h/t Robin Grantham via twitter) says that the kind of mood your doctor is in may significantly impact the quality of care you get.
On days the doctors felt positive moods, they spoke more to patients, wrote fewer prescriptions, ordered fewer tests and issued fewer referrals. However, when doctors were in a bad mood, they did the opposite.
Now, I bet this is true in any line of work. If you’re in a bad mood one day you probably aren’t as good at your job as on days you are in a good mood. Ok, well maybe not every line of work.
Still, if being in a bad mood leads to lower quality, higher cost medicine, let’s think about what the work life of a doctor typically looks like.
For starters, they often have to see 30 or 40 patients a day, and spend maybe 20 minutes with each. Private insurers and the government impose on them an increasing amount of administrative work. They’re also increasingly involved in the medical decisions the doctor works so hard to make. Doctors’ incomes aren’t going up, but the cost of their malpractice coverage is. Meanwhile, patients are increasingly demanding and sophisticated, the pace of change in diagnosis and treatment is accelerating.
It’s a set-up that seems exquisitely designed to create high levels of stress, anxiety, fatigue and burn-out, doesn’t it?
Of course, these were precisely the things the Israeli researchers said led to lower quality, higher-cost medicine.
The stress, anxiety, fatigue and burn-out we see, though, are just symptoms of a larger problem. Our system too often deprives doctors of the time and space they need to get to know a patient, think about their problem, consult with colleagues, and offer sound advice. These are the things patients want from their doctors. What’s more, doing these things are a big part of why people become doctors in the first place. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of anything in the health care reform proposals that addresses this deeply fundamental problem, and so it will continue, or get worse.
Which ought to create bit more stress and anxiety for the rest of us.
