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January 17, 2019
Marisa Saint Martin, MD, FASCP, was in medical school in her native Argentina when she became sick for an extended period and couldn’t attend classes. Nevertheless, she had to sit for an oral exam; it was the first time she’d ever received a failing grade. She suffered a confidence crisis, even though she did not recognize it as such. It was her first encounter with burnout. Throughout her career as a pathologist, additional burnout episodes followed.
Many laboratory and health system administrators are unaware of the toll that burnout has on their employees, as well as on overall productivity, according to Paul Chiou, MPH, SCT(ASCP), a faculty member in the Rutgers University School of Health Professions, in Newark, NJ.
Mr. Chiou is a member of the ASCP Job Satisfaction, Burnout Committee and Well-Being, which last fall distributed a survey regarding employee burnout in the laboratory to pathologists, laboratory professionals and pathologist residents. Results will be published next fall.
“This survey raises awareness of burnout and the importance of employee wellbeing,” Mr. Chiou says.
Burnout—characterized by a high degree of emotional exhaustion, high depersonalization, and low sense of personal accomplishment from work—is a significant phenomenon affecting more than half of U.S. physicians, according to a 2017 National Academy of Medicine paper.1 Burnout and depression can affect medical students and residents, as well as medical laboratory professionals. And, physician burnout has been tied to medical errors, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine.2
“Stress is part of life. It’s important to learn to navigate through it,” says Dr. Saint Martin, a pathologist at Trinity Loyola University Medical Center and its affiliate, Trinity Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, in suburban Chicago. “Burnout affects employees across the board in the healthcare environment.”
After an encounter with burnout which caused her to switch jobs, Dr. Saint Martin went on to obtain training and education on burnout prevention. She holds a certification with the International Coach Federation, and has become a Resilience Coach. She has also been named chair of Gottlieb’s Wellness Committee. She has been invited to lecture on these topics at the regional and national level, including a recent Resilience Workshop at the 2018 ASCP Annual Meeting. Once a month over lunch, Dr. Saint Martin meets with pathology residents to provide tools to help them navigate stress, emphasizing the importance of maintaining good physical, mental and spiritual health.
“In the wellness program, we are given a chance to practice different strategies to improve our mental and physical health,” explains Loyola pathology resident Alessa P. Aragao, MD. “It is an opportunity to educate ourselves about stress, burnout, how to reach well-being, and where to find support. Dr. Saint Martin’s activities and lectures have given me awareness of physician stress and burnout, and, most importantly, how to prevent it.”
In his own life, Mr. Chiou exercises regularly to work off some of the stress that builds up throughout the day. “In some labs, you have to sit at your chair for a really long time and engage in the repetitive motion of assiduously combing through thousands of cells on slides looking for the presence of abnormal, precancerous or other disease process each day,” he says, adding, “It’s really good to recharge, mentally and physically.”
In a previous management job, Mr. Chiou held one-on-one monthly meetings with individual staff. “Some labs frown on that as it’s a half hour of lost productivity,” he explains. “Yet, that’s when you get to know how the employee is doing. If issues of burnout exist, you can address them early.”
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