Avoid the “Urgent Trap”
“The important task rarely must be done today, or even this week. … But the urgent task calls for instant action. … The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time’s perspective, their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the vital tasks we pushed aside. We realize we’ve become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.” 1
—Charles Hummel
A few months ago, on one of my presidential travels, I met a young hospitalist who was overwhelmed. Thirty-year-old Emily had finished her residency in a good program just six months before. She had been a good resident, even winning an award as Resident of the Year. She was married with a young child at home and had recently moved to a new city, which was about 500 miles from her and her husband’s families. Her husband was staying at home to care for their child. They had chosen to move to this city because of its ideal climate and abundance of outdoor activities. The city had several HM opportunities, and Emily had chosen the one with the largest, most mature program. Everything seemed perfect at the start of her new job, but within a few months, she was overwhelmed, which led her to thoughts of quitting or moving to a program across the city to improve her lot.
One could naturally think that this was just a hospitalist in transition, from residency to attending. She was dealing with a lot of professional and personal issues, and maybe she had just not found her groove yet. And this was certainly true. Professionally, she was dealing with about a 20-patient-a-day workload. She had volunteered for two hospital committees and was serving as a physician champion for a UTI bundle the hospital was rolling out. The program was not short-staffed, but it did foster a culture of finishing your work before going home, and Emily was consistently staying one or two hours beyond her eight- to 12-hour shifts.
When I asked her about the specifics of her HM program, she had few complaints. The program had several night hospitalists, so she was grateful for the lack of night call. They also had fellows from an academic medical center helping with weekend admissions, so weekend call was once every six weeks. The monthly hours required by the program were reasonable. She got along with the group and hospital leadership; her salary was competitive and, in fact, guaranteed the first two years. At that time, she would graduate to a modified-productivity system based on a combination of work RVUs and quality metrics.
Yet Emily clearly was overwhelmed and contemplating a resignation.
As I talked with her, I started working through the differential diagnosis like any physician would. Knowing that the source of many hospitalist issues is the program itself, I worked through the various pillars of hospitalist satisfaction as demonstrated in SHM’s white paper on career satisfaction: reward/recognition, workload schedule, community/environment, and autonomy control.2 There seemed to be minor issues in some of the areas but nothing significant.
I then jumped to job fit and attempted to get a rough estimate of job control. Once again, minor issues. Emily did not appear to have a major disconnect between her desire for control and the control she currently had in her work.
