Internet CME Course: MedPEP, the Medical Professionals Empowerment Program MedPEP) – Episode 16: What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear

Activity ID

2956

Expires

January 24, 2025

Format Type

Internet

CME Credit

1.0

Fee

$0

CME Provider: Massachusetts Medical Society

Description of CME Course

MedPEP, the Medical Professionals Empowerment Program, is a Free podcast series jointly provided by Physician Health Services, Inc. (PHS) and the Massachusetts Medical Society. PHS is a charitable organization dedicated to improving the health, well-being and effectiveness of physicians and medical students.

Regulations, technology, organizational complexity, and the explosion of medical knowledge have created a perfect storm for most practicing health professionals. Physician burnout rates now exceed 50%. MedPEP’s star, Dr. Marie Curious, is a young, primary care internist who has started to fantasize about leaving the profession that she loves. On her MedPEP journey, Marie joins Dr. Les Schwab and a group of specialized physicians, coaches, and other experts, who offer a broad range of practical techniques to help her survive and thrive in today’s tough medical environment. The territory they cover includes nutrition, exercise, getting along with difficult colleagues, dealing with bureaucracy and bosses, multi-tasking, system improvement, meditation, and addiction. The MedPEP journey helps Marie, and other health professionals facing similar challenges, gain insight into practical methods for empowering themselves as well as their teams, employers, and the broken system.

Dr. Marie Curious and MedPEP host Dr. Schwab have a rich and engaging conversation on the doctor-patient relationship with primary care physician and writer Dr. Danielle Ofri. The discussion contains numerous clinical pearls, some of which are drawn from Dr. Ofri’s experiences learning to play the cello as an adult. She reflects on her own frustrations with electronic medical records in a way that steers Marie in the direction of valuing and savoring the time she spends with patients, attentively listening to their stories, while judiciously and productively managing the visit length. Dr. Ofri urges physicians to utilize the first few minutes of each outpatient visit for “full frontal listening.” This helps to win the patient’s trust while providing hard data that reveals the patient’s most pressing health concerns. She links this technique of active, empathic listening to two of the holy grails valued by health care business leaders: patient satisfaction and patient safety. Dr. Ofri encourages physicians to adopt a mindset of continuous learning, growth, and professional development, and views this stance as an antidote to personal and professional burnout. And finally, Dr. Ofri advises that “if you really want to feel rejuvenated about medicine, make a house call to one of your frail patients. It makes you feel good about what you are doing.” Drs. Curious and Schwab concur with the importance of reconnecting to the essence of clinical medicine: the doctor-patient relationship.

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