Dr. Virginia Shaffer is a colorectal surgeon at Emory and the scientific director of the Emory Crohn’s and Colitis Center. Listen in to hear Dr. Shaffer discuss the role of managing expectations when fighting burnout, the importance of self-nomination within academic medicine, and her perspective on the future of IBD research. Select quotes below:
“[Regarding burnout], I don’t think that there’s one solution that is good for everybody. I think that you, as a person, have to decide what are the things that are important, and then put them on your schedule. Unfortunately, when you’re a resident, you’re on borrowed time… and I think that’s what adds a lot to the difficulty in terms of living your life in a fulfilled way.”
“For IBD patients, a lot of quality of life years (QOLYs) get ignored. We focus a lot on mortality – but no one technically dies from IBD, unless there is a severe complication. The QOLYs, though, are so affected, because it is a lot of the time young people. Then they can’t work. Then they’re on pain medications. I think the disease burden of IBD has been severely underestimated.
On the other hand, you think of cancer, and everybody is like, “Oh my gosh, you have cancer!” There are then all of these resources… and you never hear of someone who can’t have a cancer operation because they don’t have insurance. Somehow, we figure out a way to take care of them. No one would be refused chemotherapy, yet we have people in their 20s who are refused anti-TNFs and biologics for IBD. Yeah, they’re technically not going to die next year if you don’t give it to them, but if you look at how their quality of life is impacted, especially over their lifespan… I don’t think that aspect [of IBD] has been fully explored.”
Links to references in order of mention:
Liselotte Dyrbye, et al. Association of Clinical Specialty With Symptoms of Burnout and Career Choice Regret Among US Resident Physicians. JAMA. 2018;320(11):1114-1130. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2702870
The Dead by James Joyce: http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/958/
The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Storey-Mountain-Thomas-Merton/dp/0156010860
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris: https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Modern-Library-Paperback/dp/0375756787/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546727300&sr=1-1&keywords=the+rise+of+theodore+roosevelt
Music in this episode is by Kevin MacLeod and is available under Creative Commons License.