Lonely planet is OK, but why lonely physician?

摘要

Physician burn out is a well-accepted reality, yet, an under- reported and under-actioned problem facing the medical com- munity. The traditional human-centric and touch-based prac- tice of medicine, where most illnesses are diagnosed by either clinical inspection, physical palpation or auscultation, has now given way to technology-based imaging modalities, which require very little patient interaction. Infact, most inves- tigations today are being done in an automated mode, overlooked by technicians and reported at the back office lo- cated remotely, for example in Asia for North America. These “Non Face-to-Face’ encounters, as against the ‘Face-to-Face’ encounters of yesteryears, seem to be contributing in a large measure to the isolation and physical and mental loneliness of the physicians. Though all this seems intuitive, it is just the first time that Kulkarni et al. [1] have looked at this matter in more details, including the drivers of physician loneliness and the opportunities that exist for meaningfully ameliorating them.