Mar
02

Providers Overcome Healthcare Burnout By Changing Their Practice Model

Every occupation has its occupational hazards.

Nurses get stuck with needles. Police officers and military personnel get shot with real bullets in the line of duty. Firefighters get burned and suffer from smoke inhalation.

In 1860, Orange, New Jersey physician J. Addison Freeman published an article in The Transactions of the Medical Society of New Jersey entitled “Mercurial Disease Among Hatters.” (1) Dr. Freeman gave a clinical account of symptoms common among people who worked in the hat-making industry. This occupational hazard earned affected hat makers the term “Mad Hatter” for the psychological and neurological symptoms of erethism or mercury poisoning. (18)

What if we discovered that members of a specific occupation group had high rates of depression, physical and emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of a sense of personal accomplishment?

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