Tune into Swift Healthcare Podcast with guest Diane Shannon, MD, MPH, ACC

Ranked a Top 60 Healthcare Leadership podcast by Feedspot.

Dr. Diane Shannon is a former primary care physician, a certified coach, and co-author of the book, Preventing Physician Burnout: Curing The Chaos And Returning Joy To The Practice Of Medicine. Her personal experience with burnout and conversations with hundreds of physicians motivated her to pursue coaching training and certification. She now helps women physicians harness their superpowers and create lives in which they can thrive. She also continues to advocate for health system change through her writing, which you can find on LinkedIn or her website, dianeshannon.com.

Links for Diane Shannon, MD, MPH, ACC:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianewshannon/

www.dianeshannon.com.

Music Credit: Jason Shaw from www.Audionautix.com

THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

To help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts, we’d love to offer polished show notes. However, Swift Healthcare is in its first year. 

What we can offer currently are these imperfect show notes. The transcription is far from perfect. But hopefully it’s close enough - even with the errors - to give those who aren’t able or inclined to audio interviews a way to participate.  Please enjoy!

Transcript 

[00:00:00 ] Patrick Swift, PhD, MBA, FACHE: [00:00:00 ] Welcome folks. In another episode of the Swift healthcare podcast, I'm delighted that you're here and I've a wonderful guest for us. Diane Shannon, Diane. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:09 ] Diane Shannon, MD, MPH, ACC: [00:00:09 ] Thank you so much, Patrick. Glad to be here.

[00:00:11 ] Patrick Swift, PhD, MBA, FACHE: [00:00:11 ] It's a joy having you here, Diane and folks. Let me share with you. Diane's bio I want to encourage you to perk your ears. This is, this is going to be a good one. Dr. Diane Shannon is a former primary care physician. She's a certified coach and a co author of the book, preventing physician burnout, curing the chaos and returning joy to the practice of medicine. Isn't that delicious title. And I'm sure the wisdom in that book, doesn't just apply to physicians. It applies to addressing burnout in general, but, uh, with a passion for addressing physician burnout is what that book is about.

[00:00:46 ] And her personal experience with burnout and conversations with hundreds of physicians and motivated her to pursue coaching, training, and certification. She now helps women physicians harness their superpowers. I love that [00:01:00 ] and create lives in which they can thrive. She also continues to advocate for health system change through her writing, which you can find on LinkedIn.

[00:01:07 ] And we'll talk about her website. So stay tuned on that. But Diane. Welcome to the show. I'm delighted to hear Diane. And so let's jump right into it. And the focus of the show we're going to be talking about here is challenges. Facing women physicians today. And today is a loaded term because there's so much going on.

[00:01:32 ] Socio-politically in health care. COVID the aftereffects of COVID. There are so many elements in here that I'm, I'm delighted that we can be spending some time talking about this with Diane and talking about her research, but I'd love to start Diane with just your, why w what got you into this work recognizing you described yourself as a former physician.

[00:01:52 ] But I expect my MDs and respect what you've accomplished in your academic career. So tell us about that, uh, in, in how you perceive [00:02:00 ] yourself and how you've been contributing.

[00:02:02 ] Diane Shannon, MD, MPH, ACC: [00:02:02 ] Right. So I was inspired to become a physician because of my mother. Like a lot of physicians are inspired by family members. My mother was a nurse midwife. And I was lucky enough to be able to shadow her. At times with her patients, she had her own independent birth center, and I saw this incredible experience where she had these amazing connections with her patients.

[00:02:28 ] And I saw how satisfying her career was. It was really amazing and meaningful every day. And so that's what inspired me and I, uh, I happen to be good in biology. And so it was an easy movie, you know, Mo moved right into pre-med and then into med school and then into training and I chose primary care.

[00:02:48 ] Because I really, I really wanted that kind of connection with patients that, that meaningful connection that's healing. And now I understand healing both ways when that [00:03:00 ] connection works. And what I found is really starting in the clinical years, the third year of medical school, that the environment, the clinical environment was not really conducive to supporting that optimal relationship with patients.

[00:03:17 ] And one of the things I noticed first, I think was patient safety issues. And that really concerned  me. Um, and this was back before the IOM report came out in 2001 that really, or 1999 and then 2001 that really focused attention on patient safety. So I was constantly aware of, okay, what do I have to navigate in order to protect my patients from something that might fall through the cracks?

[00:03:44 ] And I looking back now, I can say, I think that's part of what led to the burnout I experienced. Um, it probably wasn't all was also exacerbated by the conditions then, you know, there weren't work hour restrictions and was regularly working a hundred [00:04:00 ] hours a week. And sometimes as many as 130, I mean, it really was, um, overwhelming.

[00:04:06 ] So, uh, I thought about leaving, but I kept thinking, Oh, I'll just do the next thing. I'll just finish internship. I'll just finish residency. I'll just, you know, get my boards on, you know, pass my boards and then I'll, I'll start practicing and things will be better. And they were a little better, the worst rep, the worst burnout experience or symptoms that I had were actually during residency.

[00:04:29 ] Um, and I really, uh, I struggled, I, I felt like I gave up so many parts of who I am in order to, to be present for patients and get through training. Um, I, and I actually started having memory problems at home. Like within work, I was fine, but then I would come home and I'd forget things like zip codes, you know, just. Basics. Um, and I just, when I practiced, I, you know, I, I thought about, well maybe if this were a little bit different, so I changed [00:05:00 ] to a different practice site. Maybe if this were a little bit different and I just didn't see the kind of wholesale change to create an environment where I would feel I could connect with patients and also have a life. And so I made the decision to switch. And so I, I actually, in the last year I was practicing was part-time got a master's in public health because I really love looking at the big picture. And then I transitioned into a job at a communications company. So really overseeing the accuracy of medical documents that they had and what I found, I fell into writing while I was there.

[00:05:42 ] I loved it. And I thought this is what I want to do. So I left and I was a freelance writer for more than 20 years. And I gravitated towards writing about the healthcare system to try to understand what's going on with it. What are some of the patient's safety issues? How could things be [00:06:00 ] better and was I'm so inspired by. Individuals and organizations who see that and then make a change and have improvement and watching how that improvement can have a ripple effect. So that was really inspiring to me. And while I was doing that happened to, um, run across the definition of professional burnout, a light bulb went  off and I thought, Oh, there's a name for it. I had no idea.

[00:06:28 ] Patrick Swift, PhD, MBA, FACHE: [00:06:28 ] Uh huh.

[00:06:29 ] Diane Shannon, MD, MPH, ACC: [00:06:29 ] And I happen to be working with a coach at the time. And she said to me, Diane, why have you never told your story publicly about leaving medicine and burnout? And I said, are you kidding? Why would I do that? Like, it just, it felt like such a w and I carried shame about it. Like, I should have been able to hack this.

[00:06:53 ] You know, and so over time I began to see that it actually was courageous to leave something that [00:07:00 ] wasn't working and to recreate a life that had some meaning. Right. And that worked for me. And so I did, I told my story, um, I wrote it, um, In a guest post on an NPR website and there was this amazing uptake.

[00:07:17 ] So there was something like 26,000 views in the first week. And this was, this was before much was written about physician burnout. So I think that came out in 2012 and physicians began contacting me and they'd say, I didn't know, anyone else felt this way. Right. Here. Here's what, here's what my life looks like right now.

[00:07:40 ] And I can't do this. Right. So that just inspired me to continue writing about it. I started a blog, um, ended up writing the book with my coauthor, Paul DeChant another physician. Now the book after interviewing all these experts about healthcare and the healthcare [00:08:00 ] system and burnout and physicians with burnout, what became so clear to us in writing the book is burnout is a reflection of a system problem.

[00:08:09 ] Patrick Swift, PhD, MBA, FACHE: [00:08:09 ] amen to that.

[00:08:10 ] Diane Shannon, MD, MPH, ACC: [00:08:10 ] Yeah. So I left that experience of, you know, writing the book. It's thinking. The only way to fix burnout for clinicians is to fix these deep complex system problems. And that's the only way that that was my thinking.

[00:08:27 ] Patrick Swift, PhD, MBA,