Logo

Log In Sign Up |  An official publication of: American College of Emergency Physicians
Navigation
  • Home
  • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
  • Clinical
    • Airway Managment
    • Case Reports
    • Critical Care
    • Guidelines
    • Imaging & Ultrasound
    • Pain & Palliative Care
    • Pediatrics
    • Resuscitation
    • Trauma & Injury
  • Resource Centers
    • mTBI Resource Center
  • Career
    • Practice Management
      • Benchmarking
      • Reimbursement & Coding
      • Care Team
      • Legal
      • Operations
      • Quality & Safety
    • Awards
    • Certification
    • Compensation
    • Early Career
    • Education
    • Leadership
    • Profiles
    • Retirement
    • Work-Life Balance
  • Columns
    • ACEP4U
    • Airway
    • Benchmarking
    • Brief19
    • By the Numbers
    • Coding Wizard
    • EM Cases
    • End of the Rainbow
    • Equity Equation
    • FACEPs in the Crowd
    • Forensic Facts
    • From the College
    • Images in EM
    • Kids Korner
    • Medicolegal Mind
    • Opinion
      • Break Room
      • New Spin
      • Pro-Con
    • Pearls From EM Literature
    • Policy Rx
    • Practice Changers
    • Problem Solvers
    • Residency Spotlight
    • Resident Voice
    • Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine
    • Sound Advice
    • Special OPs
    • Toxicology Q&A
    • WorldTravelERs
  • Resources
    • ACEP.org
    • ACEP Knowledge Quiz
    • Issue Archives
    • CME Now
    • Annual Scientific Assembly
      • ACEP14
      • ACEP15
      • ACEP16
      • ACEP17
      • ACEP18
      • ACEP19
    • Annals of Emergency Medicine
    • JACEP Open
    • Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Medical Editor in Chief
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Awards
    • Authors
    • Article Submission
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Information

ACEP16 Mills Lecture to Examine Dangers of Physician Burnout

By Richard Quinn | on September 19, 2016 | 0 Comment
ACEP16
  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
Print-Friendly Version

Thom Mayer, MD, FACEP, FAAP, wants emergency physicians to talk more about the danger of physician burnout.

You Might Also Like
  • Mills Lecture: Beware of Burnout
  • ACEP16 Rorrie Lecture to Address Value of Emergency Medicine
  • Avoid Financial Dangers When You Are a New Physician
Explore This Issue
ACEP16 Preview: Vol 35 – No 09a – September 2016

So he’ll dedicate his James D. Mills Jr. Memorial Lecture at ACEP16 to the topic.

“There’s a hidden danger of the burnout phenomenon in what we do,” said Dr. Mayer, executive vice president of EmCare, founder and chief executive officer of BestPractices, Inc., the medical director for the NFL Players Association, and a clinical professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and University of Virginia Schools of Medicine, in Charlottesville, Virginia. “And the curious thing is the better you do it, the more passionately you do your job, the more you’re at risk for burnout.”

Dr. Mayer

Dr. Mayer

Dr. Mayer will deliver his address, “Loving the Job You Have While Creating the Job You Love,” from 1:30 to 2:20 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17. He will tell emergency physicians they need to recognize what burnout looks like, be it physical exhaustion, professional cynicism leading to detachment or depersonalization, or what Dr. Mayer calls “passion disconnect.”

He will then encourage attendees to proactively deal with burnout with three simple ideas. First, doctors should think about what they like about their jobs and maximize those duties. Second, identify those tasks that are tolerable and don’t allow them to become issues leading to burnout. Third, and perhaps most difficult, “take the things [you] hate and eliminate them to the best extent possible from [your] job.”

“Burnout is the silent epidemic that’s stealing our passion, and we’ve got to stop that silence,” Dr. Mayer added. “We have to talk about diagnosis, which starts with the recognition of it and what it looks like to us and what it looks like to our colleagues. The ability to say, ‘OK, now that we’ve gotten this silent epidemic out in the open, we can understand how we make that diagnosis—just like a diagnosis that we make in the emergency department.’”

Topics: ACEPACEP16American College of Emergency PhysiciansAnnual Scientific Assembly

Related

  • VACEP Legal Victory Illustrates Why the Prudent Layperson Standard Still Matters

    October 26, 2023 - 1 Comment
  • “If Not Me, Then Who?”

    March 16, 2022 - 4 Comments
  • ACEP’s New Executive Director to Start in July

    June 16, 2020 - 0 Comment

Current Issue

ACEP Now May 03

Read More

About the Author

Richard Quinn

Richard Quinn is an award-winning journalist with 15 years’ experience. He has worked at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., and currently is managing editor for a leading commercial real estate publication. His freelance work has appeared in The Jewish State, ACEP Now, The Hospitalist, The Rheumatologist, and ENT Today. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three cats.

View this author's posts »

No Responses to “ACEP16 Mills Lecture to Examine Dangers of Physician Burnout”

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*
*

Wiley
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertise
  • Cookie Preferences
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 2333-2603