Physician Leader as a Change or Burnout Agent in Physician Group Practices: Leadership Approach from a Mindfulness, Selflessness, and Compassion (MSC) Outlook

Abstract

Physicians as leaders of change and burnout agents face constant challenges of leadership within their group practices. The importance of skills, knowledge, and competencies necessitates that the rapidly changing and volatile healthcare environment needs to be reassessed. Seeing physicians as burnout individuals in hospital systems, having limited effectiveness, only seems to evade the need to wield effective leadership in private practice. This paper aims to offer a lens to approach leadership changes and physician burnout from a mindfulness, selflessness, and compassionate (MSC) framework. An MSC culture relying on foundational human drivers is important to adopt. The most current literature on physicians as leaders of change and burnout agents is not exhaustive but offers steps to reduce factors that hinder well-being. Measuring them with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the most used tool in scientific literature only offers a glimpse of the solution. It is paramount to examine the daily life exposure to the stress of practicing physicians to understand other dimensional drivers behind the phenomenon.