How Coaching Helps Doctors

The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

—Marcel Proust

By some estimations 90% of physician burnout can be attributed to systemic factors, 10% to internal factors. If true, how can coaching actually help? It's a real question. Is coaching simply a bandaid, or worse, a way to blame the victim, just a way to shore you up so you can go back to being a cog in the wheel? This is the hypothetical question that Dael Waxman MD posed at the Ending Physician Burnout Global Summit 2021. Indeed, teaching you a few mindfulness techniques or a yoga pose could simply be an example of Owen Muir MD calls, "Help that isn't that helpful". But if burnout is where adaptive capacity meets job stressors, as Thom Mayer, MD says, this is where coaching can come in: Increasing your adaptive ability, or resilience -- not to just shore you up so you can go back to a toxic work environment, but also to help you create boundaries, build courage to say No, get creative about Yes and maybe even find a new direction altogether. If you can learn to actually embody the change you want to be, you can also go out into the world and change it. If you can change your internal system, from the inside out, through movement, mindfulness and coaching so you can return to alignment with your deepest values and highest aspirations.