There’s one big reason that Robert Pearl, M.D., looks forward to the holidays.
During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, the CEO of the Permanente Medical Group, gets back into the operating room. As the head of the nation's largest medical group, Pearl writes in a piece for Forbes that he had to give up doing surgery on a regular basis.
Every year, however, he gets back to being a surgeon, as his leadership demands dwindle during that holiday week and it’s unlikely he’ll suddenly need to fly off to another part of the country.
“It’s a magical time for me, contrasting dramatically with my world as CEO. For several hours each day, my focus is not on millions of Kaiser Permanente members—or, for that matter, on all the complexities of healthcare policy, politics and strategy—but, rather, on a single patient at a time,” writes Pearl.
He looks forward to his week performing surgery for months and finds it also invigorates him for months after. That return to the calling that originally drew him to medicine brings back the magic, he says.
Many physicians suffer from burnout and experts urge clinicians to find ways to bring joy back to the practice of medicine. Pearl also encourages physicians to step up into leadership roles. "My basic message is that this is a time for physicians across the United States to lead,” he told FiercePracticeManagement in an interview last month. “I think patients trust physicians to do the right thing for them.”