The Indian healthcare system has turned into a daily ordeal where there are overcrowded outpatient departments (OPDs). There is no longer an exception to having long queues, limited consultation time, and patient loads that are overwhelming. Out of this overcrowding of patients is a more serious image: that of doctors who are overworked and work in an environment of physical, emotional and mental pressures.
A doctor in most government hospitals and even private ones is supposed to treat hundreds of people in a day meaning that they have only a couple of minutes per patient. This stress takes away clinical decision-making, communicating with patients, and continuity of care. To physicians, the effects are dire- burnout, emotional disengagement, depersonalization, sleep deprivation as well as reduced job satisfaction.
The causes of the issue are all structural: mismatch between doctors and population size, lack of proper infrastructure in the healthcare sector, inappropriate referral systems, excessive administrative burden, and the absence of mental health care services to healthcare professionals. With a low-quality primary care, patients rush in tertiary hospitals with conditions that would have been treated in the primary stages, thus adding more strains to the OPDs.
Burnout is not only disastrous to doctors but also to patient safety, causing more medical errors, a lack of empathy, or the quickest way to get people to leave the job. Making exhaustion a norm of the profession worsens the crisis.
The best way to solve this is by putting more focus on primary healthcare, enhancing doctor-patient ratio, digital triage, allied health, and focusing on physician welfare. A healthcare system can never be sustainable with caregivers overworked regularly.
When physicians are operating under burnout, can the system really provide quality care- or should we be reaching a breaking point? How can we manage this issue in a better way ?
MBH/PS