The last three years, mired in a pandemic, left the healthcare system in a chaotic state of being. I’ve seen it up close as I’m in the healthcare field. I’ve seen the mass exodus of staff, especially clinical staff. It’s been a brutal slog to address the workforce shortage. This is in part due to there being massive provider burnout. I’m sure you have heard and read about the high levels of burnout in the field. This makes it so that it becomes, at times, a long wait to get an appointment.
Now, I’m going to talk about provider burnout as a patient.
Ever since mid-January, I’ve had chronic pain. It’s now mid-March and no diagnosis as of yet. I started off with x-rays, then blood work, then urinalysis, then ct scan, then ultrasound and then …. I started off with a nephrologist, then urologist, then a primary care provider, then an endocrinologist, then an ob/gyn, and next a gastroenterologist. Whew!
This is my provider burnout story. I feel like a hot potato being tossed from one provider to another. I’m a football being punted down the field. And, none really wants to prescribe pain medication as they each feel the other should.
Now, I have gotten some superb caring providers who really want to help figure this out. And, I’ve had some who seem to have empathy fatigue. Sigh.
I see the chaos from both sides. However, my own empathy and burnout are in flux. None of this is easy. Yet, I got to keep going. I want to feel better. But, I can see how some people become jaded and disconnected from their healthcare.
Categories: Culture, current events, Health, mental health, Psychology, society
psychologistmimi 
As pain is subjective, as you probably know and understand, a decent measuring tool like the McGill Pain Questionnaires (Long and Short) would assist the professionals understanding how intense personally to yourself. Not sure what assessment procedures you have taken. Fibromyalgia is difficult to get at. Erupting in many parts of the body. And in different descriptive ways. Pinpointing the source of pain could be helped by the descriptors in the McGill questionnaire with someone expert in analysing it. Hope you find answers. Sounds awful. All the best.
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Thanks for the well wishes and the suggestion. It’s a good one! Will follow though
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I hope they get you sorted quickly now — you’ve been through the gauntlet already. Enough!
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Thank you for your well wishes! I hope so too. Enough is enough. Sigh.
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You have gobs of RESULTS from all those tests; maybe some possibilities can be eliminated? Do we yet have AI expert systems you can ask? I’ve always understood that it is one of the uses which is actually better than doctors because it doesn’t come with prejudices. As someone IN the healthcare system, do you have access we ordinary patients don’t?
Sorry you’re going through this at such a tough time.
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I did get access to a great endicronologist, but even being in the healthcare industry, it takes a lot of effort. But i recognize my privilege in being able to try to push through. It’s tough out there.
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This was an issue since before the pandemic. My spouse suffered from an incredibly painful autoimmune disease for 10+ years, being misdiagnosed with everything from a dislocated rib to irritable bowel syndrome in the interim. A few years ago they finally figured it out and, after a battle with the insurance company to get them to pay for the very expensive treatment, it’s finally under control. It seems that, at some point in the last two decades, doctors have been in a rush to get you out of their office and just diagnose you with the first thing that comes to mind – writing you a prescription before kicking you out the door. When you don’t get better, they go to the next thing that pops into their head and write you anpther prescription. And so on.
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I’m glad to hear that your spouse is finally better. But what an ordeal!
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Mimi,
The health scare-snare racket itself is sick. I’ve seen it from both sides and quit being a drug pusher for the state as soon as I paid off medical school debt.
But I feel old and fatigued by the run-around. Where is the joy in today’s world?
Loved ones, children and pets can provide it, presumably, and these can be healing.
You have suffered a major loss this year. I suspect that your undiagnosable pain is your body’s response to your grief.
The spring equinox March 21 symbolizes new beginnings, rebirth, and vitality, literally a new year in our sun-centered system.
May it bring rejuvenation to you.
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I too am asking for where is the joy? Everything seems to be burning
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For me the joy comes in scattered, unanticipated moments, but today, the dreary rain makes all damp, but quiet . . . and Speckles crows, so I know he and Tweety are safe and dry in their coop.
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Invisible Illnesses That Others Cannot Readily See
That Medical Science Has A Most Difficult Practice of
Measuring Empirically Will Surely Be Conundrums of
Life As i Surely Remember The
Two Years of Even Getting
Diagnosed With A Worst Pain Known to
Humankind Type Two Trigeminal Neuralgia
And Dysautonomia And So Many Other Issues Stress
Related As i Still Presented Physically As an Above
Average Specimen
For Male Health
Then at Age 47 True
Yet How Do You Measure
Not Remembering A Feeling of A Smile
Ever What Kind of Pill Will Bring Back the
Warmth of A Pet of A Cat True A Dead Soul
Is Not Easily Empirically Measured Through Medical
Science or How Powerful A Placebo May Heal or How
Much Stress May Create Disorder Disease and Literal Eventual
Premature Death of Course With the Nocebo impact of Negative
Beliefs About Life too Dear Miriam i Can’t Imagine Fully What You
Are going Through
And Of Course Back
in Hell Just Looking
At me Folks Basically Said
Pull Up Your Boot Straps Folks
Have it Worse Than You Even After
The Medical Diagnosis of the Worst Pain
Known to Humankind the ‘Suicide Disease’ Finally
Came in Well After The Rheumatologist Gave Up on
What Could Help me and the Other Doctors Offered
No Prognosis For Recovery Either The Answers
Would Only Be Found By Searching Within
And Bringing A Dance And Song of My
Soul Back to Life For Real However
i Have Great Respect for the
Medical Field as They Have
Helped me in Many
Other Ways And
i no Longer Fear Doctors
Like i Did For 26 Years Before
Hell Came at Age 47 Full Blown
Medicine is A Practice And An Art
And So Is Humanity There is Pain that Will
Never Be Fully Empirically Measured That Others
Will Ever Relate too Same As Bliss Beyond All Imagination
For Those Who Have Yet to Wear Those Wings oF LiGHT True
Been to Both
Sides of the
Coin There is
Room For Both
The DarK And LiGHT
To Potentially Find Balance
That Lasts And in Practice
Continues to Heal
However That
May Be
Beyond All Lessons
And Answers Given
Others Provide For Real…
iNDeeD LooKinG WiTHIN Yes
Innate Instinctual And Intuitive
RiSinG Waves of Soul Do Bring
Your Description Sounds Almost
Like What my Wife Has Been Going
Through the Last Year Now She’s Two
Years Older Than You in Mid-Life too
As Measured By Chinese New Years For Fellow ‘Rats’…
Yet Like The Folks Working For the Military Dealing With
Similar Extreme Stress Like i Did They Related Stress Will Do
The Whackiest
Things to You
That You Never
Imagined Before Possible
Oh Dear Lord Their Forecasts
For the Unknowns Came True…
Without The Extreme Negative Stress my Health Excels
Before And After Hell For Real Environment Counts So Much…
And As Far As Burnout Goes on the Autism Spectrum i Was A Canary
in A Coal Mine Just Waiting to Test the Coal Mine of Modernity Now
Lots of Folks Of Every Age Are Burning Out Now Humans Have Limits…
Go Figure…
We Aren’t
Machines or
Only CLocks
That Go ‘Tik Tok’….
Oh Dear Lord to Return
to Nature Naked Enough
Whole Complete The (Eden, Etc)
‘Green Acres’ For me With SMiLes…
A Free Place
of Dance
And Song With Wings..:)
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Too many invisible illnesses
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Yes…
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Sometimes you have to get feisty with your provider. They tend to take the easy way out and this is doubly so when they are fatigued, overloaded, and stressed.
My HMO says it treats medical issues conservatively. I interpret that to mean that unless there’s an easily treated medical issue or a life threatening crisis, they do as little as possible. You’re in pain? Take Tylenol. You’re in really bad pain? Try Advil. Still in pain? Let’s set you up with physical therapy – instead of orthopedics. I’ve watched it evolve over the years – decades actually – and my “not-for-profit” has become entirely focused on the bottom line. My regular doctor has grown disinterested and abrupt.
And then COVID turned a perennial staffing shortage into an unending crisis with older doctors and nurses retiring right and left. My wife was one of them.
It is what it is and it is still better medical care than most of the world gets.
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I hear ya. Treating medical isdues consertively is definitely code! Oh boy
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💪💕☺️
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