emergency medicine, physician burnout,Dr. Erin Boyd, Lunch and Learn

LLP129: Can we cure physician burn out? with Dr. Erin Boyd

 

Let's talk about physician burnout…

 

On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Erin Boyd, an Emergency Medicine physician & former classmate to try and help us answer the question is there a cure for burnout. Dr. Boyd helps give her personal account on physician burnout and how she is able to navigate this world of being a physician when it has gotten harder than ever.

Hear how Dr. Boyd chooses to look after her mental health as an attending physician and why its important now more than ever to make sure physicians take care of the number one patient THEMSELVES!!

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Download Episode 129 Transcript

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Introduction

Dr. Berry:
Welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com and CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting. Helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy, education and affirmation. This week we bring you a finale to our series on Physician Burnout. This has been a very telling and interesting look at the other side of our profession. First I have to obviously thank Dr. Nicole for starting these things off and helping us, educate us on what physician burnout actually is, just in the first place. And really spearheading the movement where we went back and said, you know what, let's look at what medical students go through. Let's look at what residents go through. And finally, of course, let's look at what some of the attending physicians who finished and look back and say, alright, this is what physician burnout is to them. And it's very interesting to hear the level and really the definition of how people describe it at these different levels depending on where they're at.
So definitely want to say thank you to all who have been listening that's far for the podcast and for listening for this amazing series. Again please, if you've not had a chance to check out our prior episodes starting with Dr. Nicole where we really hit home what physician burnout was and is really started from there. So if you want, again, from a numbers standpoint, it is episode 124, right? 124 with Dr. Nicole and then just moving on in to this finale episode with the one person that I can't wait for you guys here. This is actually Dr. Erin Boyd, who is an emergency medicine physician. She currently works at a trauma center. Most importantly, she is a former classmate of mine, to Nova Southeastern University. She has really taken a mantle, especially when it comes to social media and just her story on physician burnout because that was something that she really wanted to drive home.
And we'll talk about this today on a podcast about her personal experience with burnout and how she's able to dealt with it and how she's really used social media to get her out of the rut that the burnout usually puts a lot of our physicians and our residents in and now our medical students in. So I can't wait for you guys to this episode, which is another great one. Like always if you had not had a chance, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a five star review. Let us know just how much of an amazing job Dr. Boyd did, or just whether if you're listening to Episode 124 and just moving on up. Let us know how anyone has done thus far on the podcast with your five star ratings are greatly appreciated, especially if you're one of my Apple podcasts users. But if you're not, again, please subscribe, please download, please tell a friend or 10 to take a listen and get right on physician burnout. Like always, get ready for another amazing episode with Dr. Berry.

Episode

Dr. Berry:
Alright Lunch and Learn community, you just heard another amazing introduction from a guest who, you has rights that a lot of people can't claim. She's actually a former classmate of mines. So I'm definitely excited to get her on and talk about a topic that we've been talking about for almost four or five weeks now guys. So I'm definitely glad to get this person on because this is the reason why I've been following very closely and been watching and seeing the growth behind what she's been doing and it has been interesting is because it's really been centered on this topic at hand. Dr. Boyd, thank you for coming on Lunch and Learn podcast. Talk to us.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Thank you so much for inviting me. Much appreciated.
Dr. Berry:
Sure. So the question I ask, and I always asked my guess because what tends to happen is I give a little spill in my introduction and people fast forward, who want to go right to the show and they want to go right to the meat of the conversation. So I always asked, well, tell us something about yourself that we may not necessarily know because we're going to get into all your business, but we may not know just about Dr. Boyd. Who is Dr. Boyd and why are you so amazing?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Well you know, I’m just one of those people that when I put my mind to something, I get it done. And I wanted to go to med school. It took me a couple of years, but I got in and I decided I wanted to go ahead and start my family in med school. So I did. I had my kids in med school. I had one in residency. So I'm just one of those people that wants to have a goal and I said it, I just get it done and I don't let anything keep me from that. So that's kind of a big part of who I am and that sort of thing. So.
Dr. Berry:
And I love that especially because you touched on a couple of topics that really hits home especially for women in medicine. One, the fact that you wanted to do it and no one was going to stop you from doing it. And two, family. Because unfortunately, again, I understand I'm on the other side of this double standard that's sometimes frowned upon. Just going into a career that you're going to be busy and wanting to actually have a family, an actual life. People think that it's actually a crazy thing which still boggles my mind today.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
You're absolutely right. Yeah. I mean, I didn't go into medical school saying, okay, I'm gonna have a family and do all this, just one of those things that hit me. And at some point, if you want a family, you have to figure out when that is. And sometimes you just don't know when the right time is. I've counseled on this with students and residents and even attendings. Now that they asked me, when do you start a family? And I just tell them it's when you're ready. It doesn't matter if it's before school, after school, during school, it's when you're physically, mentally ready because then you'll make it happen. If you feel like you're in the middle of medical school and it's time, then do it. You’ll figure it out because that's what you want in your heart. But you're right, it is hard, as a woman because physiologically we're the ones that have to bear the children and that is what it is. Can't get around it. And if my husband would do it, that would be great. But he can't. So it's a factor that luckily women, we can do all sorts of things. So we've got to have the babies too.
Dr. Berry:
Yes you can. I love it. So we were talking about a topic which is really obviously now, especially when you turn on TV and you go to a website, you read a blog, has become extremely popular in the discussion of physician burnout. And I remember when I first started, this kind of series of discussions, I figured it was just going to be a one off discussion, just forgot what it is and then go away. And I remember being almost shocked at hearing just the level of death that it was really affecting so many different people and not just physicians but residents and medical, I was just so shocked. And that's again, that's why we started a series because I really wanted to hear everyone's really opinion on the subject matter. And then of course I obviously I know a little bit about you, our Lunch and Learn community may not. Talk to us about your familiarity with physician burnout in general. When you hear those terms, what does that actually mean to you?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Well I'll tell you, I hadn't really heard this term. I don't think I remember hearing it in medical school. I didn't hear it in residency. And so I just started learning about, I think maybe the same way you described just through the grapevine here and there. Some articles come out and mentioned some little brief couple paragraphs about burnout and piqued my interest because it resonated with me so much. That's how I feel. That's how I've been feeling probably since, I mean probably, I mean medical school. Yes, but I really felt like second year of residency it really hit me and I almost felt like what did I do? I shouldn't have become a doctor. It got really bad just because I just felt spread so thin.
I love medicine but it was hard to work those hours. It's hard to work 24 or 36 hours straight, come home, try to be a mom and a wife and just try to be healthy. And I didn't know what to do. I mean, but I haven't, I guess you just pushed through. I didn't know what else to do. I had to keep going and so I started feeling that way but I didn't really put a name to it. I never talked about it. I didn't tell my residency director, I didn't tell any of my other residents because I thought I was the only one. And I think that's the biggest problem. We all think we're the only ones that feel that way. And as physicians we are so afraid of messing up. We're so afraid of looking weak and we don't talk about it.
And as a matured and grown in my specialty and I've been an attending now for five years. I luckily have had some close friends who are also ER doctors and we would start chatting and we would also feel the same way. And that connection that I made just talking about my feelings helped. And so I just think getting the word out and talking about it and letting other doctors know that it's not easy out there. We all feel this burnout stress and it's helped. And that's why I started my Instagram page. Honestly, it just was a way for me to connect, not just locally, but across the nation and even internationally. It's been amazing and it's been really great. So.
Dr. Berry:
It’s definitely amazing, your Instagram page and we will definitely make sure that it's highlighted in show notes because I need people to follow you for a lot of different reasons. I'm definitely, I'm going to spend the time little bragging on you towards the end. So I just want to let you know, unless you're a little modest, I'm definitely gonna brag on you because you're definitely a person that I really admire and I like seeing you do well and do great things especially with your message. Because I know your message and like I said, we were classmates and it's definitely something that's always the sight to see when you're like, oh, I know that person. And it's so funny because we were just talking about this before we started recording.
Just the amount of busyness that we deal with in our life as a physician that we've grown so accustomed to. I'm not sure if it starts in medical soon. Not sure if it gets hard and in residency and that we've grown so accustomed to that. It doesn't even seem abnormal to us. And I think you hit it right on the head. And I talked about this before in private previous shows that I think the biggest thing is that as a physician, we're so bad at telling people how we feel, especially our own colleagues. If I write a journal article, I'm going to tell every single person in the world, even if they don't ask me.
But when I'm not feeling well, when I'm not 100%, when I'm not even physically, but even mentally, when I'm sad, for some reason we keep all of that in. And it something that just continues to build and build and build until we really have no outlet. My wife, she's not in the medical field so it's very difficult to have these conversations when you leave the job, right? Because for those who know I’m an internist, during residency, even now, a lot of my days usually may end up with someone not coming home. And that's really not a conversation start over dinner. Those are thoughts and feelings that you have to keep to yourself.
So I definitely love that you hit home the fact that you were going through, what you felt was like, wow, this is overbearing, but you're looking around and it's one of those things where like, wow, am I the only one feeling this? Because no one else is verbalizing it. And I think that's what sometimes does a little injustice because no one else internalizes it. So when we're thinking, am I the only one who's ever experienced this? Am I weaker for experienced this? Will someone look at me in a different light if I finally say like, oh, hey, you know what, like I'm not feeling good either.
And what was interesting, especially in a reason I really earmarked this conversation and earmark, wanting to talk to you, especially as an ER physician because we, especially within our profession, we know when we look around the different specialties and we talked about people, again, we didn't even know what it was, but I guess now we deem it as burning out when we look at, people were saying, you know what, I'm done, I'm quitting. I'm out of here. ER, emergency medicine has always been one of the top related physicians positions associated with that feeling. Is that something that, especially because you didn't know about it before, but is that something that you may have thought about? Is that something, even going into emergency medicine, because I always asked at my physicians’ colleagues, why'd you go especially the women?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
I didn't know emergency medicine has one of the highest burnout rates going into it. I went into it legitimately because I enjoyed the action. I love seeing a little bit of everything. I can see kids, I see OB, I see geriatrics and cardiologists, see a little bit about everything. And I love that. I love being able to use my hands and do procedures. I love being able to make a difference, acutely right away. Somebody walks in and I can do something for them. And I love that. And I love being in the hospital setting. So I went into it thinking, wow, this is a great career for me. It fits me. I like to do shifts. So I go in and work 14 shifts a month or so, maybe a little more. I come home, on call. Perfect. Love it.
But again as time has gone on, I think the stressors in the emergency department, I didn't really consider, because I just didn't know and nobody really talks about it. So it wasn't like I was interviewing and everybody's like, oh, by the way, 65% of your colleagues are going to stop working because they hate it. Nobody really said that. So I'm like, wow, I've gotta be the only one. Everybody must love this. But we see, the emergency department sees probably people on their absolute worst day. People are coming in, people are dying. We see people who are extremely sick. We see people who don't have insurance.
And so they may have a lot of problems that I can't fix. I can't fix a lot of issues. And there's a lot of stressors from administration that I cannot control but I have extreme stresses to see patients pass, get them out of the emergency department pass with not many resources, not many nurses. And so there's a lot of pressures that I had no idea I was going to have to face. In a perfect world, if I can go in and help every single person that had, a true emergency, that'd be great. Probably 10 to 20% of what the…
Dr. Berry:
I heard that a lot too about the stressors that, not that sometimes aren't even in the clinical aspect on emergency medicine, physicians, but the social aspect, the administrative aspect, all of this is hitting you from, you can hit hard, hit face on the medical and the clinical, but you're like, whoa, I didn't expect this to hit, steamrolls.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
So true. I still love medicine. I remember, I've loved learning it and I like the medicine, emergency medicine. It's just there's so many more aspects to it I just didn't know. Just either, even if it's just irate patients or irate consultants or people yelling at me or administration saying you're not seeing patients fast enough when I'm seeing them as absolutely as fast as I can, but they don't give me C extra, CT scanners. They don't give me nurses. They don't give me beds to move patients into. Those are all things that have nothing to do with true medicine. But that's what probably frustrates me the most. And it may not sound hard, but it really takes away some of the joy of helping people.
I think part of it, you don't have a lot of control over, it's my job, I can't really quit my job. So most emergency jobs are had the same thing everywhere, no matter where you go. So sometimes you feel a little stuck. And I think when you lose a little bit of that control, failing over, your career I guess or whatever that can make you also feel a little burnt out if you lose a little autonomy. And even doctors love autonomy. We like just doing what we think is best and doing what's best for the patients. But at that gets taken away from us or we don't feel like we can do that. It makes it tough.
Dr. Berry:
What’s so interesting is that when, because we've talked to medical students, we've even talked to an ER resident and they, you can tell data, they're not saying it, but a lot of their thought process really deals in the fact that they're there. They're losing a bit of the control that they thought would have, as they move along their career. And I'm a hospitalist. For those who know that I work in the hospital city. So when she talks about time, you best believe the second I press admission, someone is clocking me and saying, when is this person leaving the hospital? And again, it is such a frustrating thing because you want to help those in front of you, but there's so many different roadblocks ahead of that quote unquote discharge time that stand in your way that for some reason we seem to be the only ones who can come to grips with it.
Unfortunately, because we're the face of health care, unfortunately physicians are or fortunately depending on how would you, where you lean. We have to deal with the brunt of, the angry and the upset. And then bad publicity that's socially with it. Definitely, something that beats you up, at time and time again and just adds on to the level of stressors that just if you were just doing clinical medicine, you're going to have stresses in it of itself. But when you add all of these extra things on here, unfortunately it takes the cake.
I gotta ask of course, obviously being in this position, as an attending physician now. Because it's funny because my medical students and my residents want to know, they want to know, hey, Dr. Boyd, does it get as get better once, I think a lot of us because we do this right of passage thing, which is, medical school and residency, uh, there are a lot of people who think that this is just what you're supposed to go through. And they think once you hit the promised land of the attending that it gets so much better.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
I will tell you my first year at a residency was probably one of the most depressing years honestly because I expected to hit the pinnacle of my career and it was going to be unicorns and rainbows and just, amazing. I get paid so much money and I'm just going to make all decisions and it's going to be great. And when I became an attending and realized that it's not, it's a lot of the same to be honest with you. I mean a lot of the same. You still stress out about making them right diagnosis like it did in residency and worrying about not missing something and making sure you're still the smart doctor. You still worry about that.
And then in addition you're like, all the other stressors I just talked about come more into play as an attending. Because you learn about it in residency. But I felt like it definitely comes into play more when you get a real job and then on top of it I didn't have anything else to really work towards. So when you become a doctor, you're working for 11 to 12 years, whatever it is on this climb to this pinnacle of being a doctor and board certified whatever you are. And once you hit it, you don't have anything else to climb to. I feel like that was a coping, I could just keep working towards the next goal. They didn't really think about how I was feeling and until I just stopped and have anything else to really work towards. All of a sudden I was like, oh my gosh, what else? So what else do I do now?
Dr. Berry:
Lunch and Learn community you can't see me shaking my head, I'm just like, ah, she hit me.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
You almost have to find yourself. You're like, well, what are my hobbies? What do I like to do? I mean, I'm just so used to like 12 years of my life or whatever it is. 11 years of this constant pure, a hundred percent stress. And then you're an attending in, you still have the same stressors, but it's different and you still feel like you don't know who you are, I guess. You know. I don’t know. That's how I felt.
Dr. Berry:
So what's interesting, I love that because when you're going through that climate, it's funny because you mentioned, what is my hobbies? But like a lot of times we don't even get time to do that when we're student in a residence. So for a lot of us, we really have gotten neglected the things outside of medicine, because we had to say, alright, I gotta pull all these eggs in this basket real quick, take care of my business here so I can get to that promised land of the mountain and then you get to that promised land the mountain, you're like, whoa, this is it?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Oh, it was what I'd been working so hard for all these years. This is what it is?
Dr. Berry:
Lunch and Learn community I'll tell you this is a such a common feeling and thought amongst a lot of physicians and I think what's happening now, what you're seeing now is that we're being much more open, right? We're being much more like forthright and not keep it. We're not keeping it as a best kept secret anymore. We're saying like, and again, none of us are saying we don't like medicine. We all love medicine. It’s all of these extra things that have infiltrated and been placed upon and been forced upon us during the process that's soured the taste. And when we do get now, we were at the top of the echelon and people are looking at us and they don't understand why we're not all golfing every weekend.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Just swimming in money and stuff, it's not like that. It's just, it's not. And I don't mean to sound like it's totally the worst. It's just so nice just to say it. And so many other people feel that way. But I just didn't know nobody ever really talked to me about it.
Dr. Berry:
Oh no, definitely not. I do academic medicine and I'm even starting to tell my residents now like, hey, I know you think once you graduate, it's all gonna be, and I know you think money is going to be like the go getter and it's gonna make everything happy. But I'm promising, if you're not finding that outlet. And now if you're not finding it, the benefit of the why now of why you're doing this, you're going to be very sad and when they offer you crazy money and you're still wondering why you're sad. Was there anything like, especially as a first year attending your fresh out and then you're filling all of these feelings, what was there to help? What did you do to deal with the stressors and the feelings that you were experiencing?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
So I actually sought out, just like therapy. I just going to a weekly therapist and it was probably one of the best decisions I ever did because it was a third party person. It wasn't like my husband because after a while, sometimes your partner, sometimes it's hard to just dish on them all the time, all that negativity. So focusing on just my mental health, because I was depressed. I had clinical depression. I had anxiety that I didn't realize as I had. I didn't have time to even think about it honestly because you're just too busy. You're too busy to even think about how depressed and anxious you are. So I focused on me which I hadn't done in years and so that was the best thing I had really done to just working on my mental health.
Because I think that's where a lot of this is, right? A lot of this is mental. You're physically tired but I think mentally you're exhausted. And the pressures of being a doctor, the pressure of keeping people alive. The pressure you can't miss a diagnosis. It takes a huge toll on you mentally. All the trainings that we do. And so that's just one thing I would recommend highly to anybody in the medical field is really take a look into your mental health. Because I think having somebody just to talk you about and learning, I didn't even know I was depressed until somebody told me.
Dr. Berry:
You’re 100% right. We read the books. We read the books. We noticed signs and we were like, not necessarily. Yup, that's exactly what happens. I love that you say, you know what, I had to focus on me because I think that's a big thing too. Of course it may sound crazy that people, no, I know doctors are so centered. No, no, we're probably like one of the most selfless people and we probably, again, especially I did primary care medicine before I did hospital medicine and I know for a fact that doctors are like the worst patients. They won't come for the wellness, they're so terrible. And the reason being not because they would purposely doing it is because they want to take care of everybody else they usually neglect themselves for later.
And what I love is that especially and I've joked about this before, as a physician, we're the one and only fields that has to be right 100% of the time. So think about that and then think about an emergency medicine physician. One of the fields, specialties that not only has to be right 100% of the time, but you have to do it much quicker than me. Like me, at least. I get some time. I can send some labs out and I can order a test. I can wait for some things that happen. You guys may have like 10 minutes, five minutes, your decision making has to be so quick and happens rapid fire. And again, remember we still talk about this clock right there. The administrators, they're still pushing this clock and they want you to ramp up faster and faster and faster.
So just imagine that level of stress. Like I said, when you go to McDonald's and they mess up your order, no one gets fired or from it. But if we miss a diagnosis, grandma doesn't come home. If we miss a diagnosis, you may not see your mom or dad. That's the level of stress that physicians, especially emergency medicine physicians, like I said, that's why I love you, because that's the level of stress you gotta deal with. So that's why I always commend my emergency medicine folks, because I know, I know it's tough.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Yeah. You're absolutely right. Because I think you're right. Physicians are very selfless and we spend our whole. Every single day we're at work, we're caring for every single patient, and I think majority of us do. We put our mind, our focus, our energy into our patients so we don't miss something. And then you've got to try to come home and then whether you have a family or not, you got to put your time and energy into your family. So it's just hard to, in order to be a good doctor in whatever, its taken time to learn because you have to figure it out. What fills your cup, what makes you feel strong, what makes you feel whole. Because you can only give so much to your patients and unless you fill up, yourself I guess. And that's how I feel like I can make the right diagnoses. Because even on the days that I've worked, let's say seven days in a row, I've seen probably, sometimes 30 to 40 patients a day, emergency situations, I may miss something just because I'm tired. I'm just tired and I might miss something for that. So if I don't take time, I can't do that to myself because then I will miss something.
Dr. Berry:
Very true. And they're not exaggerating when I say it again as a hospitalist, we have bad days where I may have to see like 25 to 30. But this isn't, they're seeing that many patients every single day. So again, like I said, that's why I really wanted to make sure that we had a conversation with an ER physician, because I know you guys get beat up way more often and much more frequent pace than others, in other fields. So that's why I wanted to make sure, if we're going to talk about burnout we definitely have to be talking to ER physician. I know they're the ones go through it.
What I would say, especially now, this especially because we're about five years out from my attending status. If you had to look back and say like, hey guys, the feelings you're experiencing are true, are real, they're burnout. This is what I went through. But these are some tips, maybe not ways that preventing, because I've argued whether there's a way to prevent it. Well these are some tips that I would maybe give helps steer the ship away to help you out. What would you give to someone? Especially let's say that Dr. Smith, she's an ER resident, I think she's a third year and she's listening and she wants to know, talk to Dr. Boyd, how do I navigate what I know is coming to me?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
A couple things that I've starting to at least try to do is if you can work less, you should do it. I think again, as physicians we want to do, do, do and help out our colleagues and help out here and there. But if you financially or whatever can work less, you should not work the maximum out to make yourself crazy. So I've told my director, I said I've got to work less. Just even if it's two shifts less a month, it makes a huge difference. Just having some time off away from your job is crucial. You've got to have time to decompress. Just want one day off in between shifts isn't going to cut it. You need much more time to decompress. And that is the pet perk of emergency medicine as we do.
14 days a month maybe it doesn't sound like a lot, but some people work in 18 days a month or whatever. You don't get enough time in between those heavy days. I'm just saying no to extracurriculars if you can. So if you don't really want to do something, you just say no, don't do it. Whether it's a committee of some sort, even if it's just your friend wants to go out to dinner, just saying no and saying no, I don't really want to do that. If you don't want to, if you want to, great. But if you're just not going to fill you and fill your cup and make you happy, don't do it. Just find things that make you feel happy. Honestly, the Instagram page, I'm bringing that up again and again, it may seem silly, but it, it makes me happy.
It gives me a hobby. It gives me connected with people, which I really enjoy doing. It's opened doors to talking with some of the medical students in the area. I've found some female physician friends that we have a group now. We've started through social media. So I've found something that I liked doing. So finding things that you like, whether it's traveling, working out, whatever. Those are some big tips. And then, I've already mentioned my mental health. I still had to go to therapy. I make sure mentally I'm in the right space. My mental health is very important and it should be for all of us physicians.
Dr. Berry:
Everybody. Of course and obviously I'm maybe biased because my wife is a mental health counselor. So she stresses and she jokes all the time that we physicians are so terrible when it comes to taking care of our mental health. So I've been a champion talking, talking, talking to someone, getting those feelings out. Because again, I wish I could say every time I go to work, it's a great day. It's not. I wish I could say every time I go to work, the person who I was able to admit is able to walk out the hospital. It does not happen. And it in a normal person shouldn't be able to deal with the level of mortality that physicians, especially those who work in a hospital setting, have to deal with.
So if you know that's what you're going to, you gotta be able to like get your mental on correctly because it doesn't matter how smart you are, if your mental isn't where it needs to be, you're going to be lost and your patients are going to be lost. And the patients will always be the loser when you're not at your tip top shape. So I love those tips because I think it's not even specialty specific. It's really like, hey, you need to find out what you do well and sometimes you gotta do you alone.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Absolutely. And this is on topic, physician depression, physician suicide, I mean it's higher than the general population. And again, this is not talked about. It's taboo. Physicians are medicating many times with drugs and alcohol and stuff like that. And it's not healthy. And we were losing physicians from our mental health because we don't take care of it. And I just like to stress that because it's helped me so much. And I know, I think part of that could be related to the burnout because we don't take time for it. So anyway. Yeah. I just wanted to add that.
Dr. Berry:
I honestly, I probably going to, I think that's where I'm hoping this conversation of burnout eventually leads us. Because now it's very popular to talk about physician burnout, moral injury and all of those things under the sun. But we don't really talk about that suicide aspect yet. (Yeah. And I think that's what comes down to it, right?). We don't really make it the hotbed we should, and again, what's worse is we're looking back, just like when we looking at this physician burnout thing, these are physicians who been out 15, 20 years and they're like, oh, you're tired. No, no, no, no. These are resident physicians who are just gaining out of practice maybe less than 10 years.
These are resident physicians who are still in residency because our medical students who are still doing medical students stuff and they're committing suicide. And that's a very scary topic. But if you don't address it right, if you don't even mention, it's like Voldemort out here, that's where the problem is. I love that you touched it because I really think and I'm hoping that this is where we eventually go. We start saying physician suicide, physician suicide, physician suicide. Just as much as we're casually saying physician burnout. (Yup). I think there's like an ICD10 code now for physician burnout. So you have to understand like, no, it's leading to a place that we need to be able to talk about right now. Right before our physician colleagues get there.

Dr. Erin Boyd:
Yap. I agreed.
Dr. Berry:
So before I let you go, I got to brag on you. So we again, classmates. Shout out to Nova Southeastern University. As a person who's been doing social media for, since probably since medical school. But I've always been enamored with social media and to the point I remember I used to get called in the office and hey Berry, make sure you don't do nothing crazy on HIPAA. HIPAA was always a big thing. I remember you joining Instagram specifically. First let's tell Lunch and Learn community how can they find you? What's your Instagram?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Okay. Its @er.doc.mom
Dr. Berry:
Alright. And remember Lunch and Learn that will be in the show notes and you definitely need to follow her, like as you're listening to me. Go ahead and go follow her. (Thank you). And I remember when you first joined and I remember watching a video of yours and you were just saying like, hey guys, I'm just here because I just want somebody to talk to. And I remember being like so enamored with that because it was one of the first times I could see like, oh wow, this is a person who is really open and really open with what's going on and okay with being open. I think social media gets such a bad rap, especially in our healthcare field. It's getting better for sure.
It definitely getting better, especially when I see what medical students are doing now compared to what we used to do when we were medical students. So definitely getting better. But when I see you, I'm here, I have this page, I'm going to be talking and follow me. And I was like, yes. I'm definitely in following because I got to see. And it's been such an amazing treat just to see your journey now. Was Instagram something that you would, was it just one of the platforms you happen to like? Was there a reason why you chose Instagram as a primary source?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
I've always enjoyed just the format of Instagram and in my back of my mind, I wanted to maybe do some sort of blog sort of thing, but I'm trying to make a website and everything just seemed annoying. So one of my friends was like, why don't you just do it on Instagram? Just do like a mini blog. I guess I just found it easy to do, just started doing. And format just seems to work well. And I didn't really know there was actually a lot of physicians on Instagram, that I had no idea. So there's a great community there for advice on all sorts of topics. And so, yeah, I just found Instagram just to be easy to use, user friendly. I like the pictures and I can make post and just talk about whatever I want. And it's pretty cool. So.
Dr. Berry:
What I love is that not only do you do that, but you also take the time to educate as well. You also take the time to say, hey, this is who I am. But hey, by the way, and you know what, let me do some education right here. And I get asked, as a person who does some blogging, does some podcasting, does some videoing. Person who does all of these things. I just love that when I see people, especially my physician colleagues, because I'd be begging, I'd be like, you don't know how many times I have to begged on my physician colleagues, I was like please just open up one of these accounts. We need you out here as we could probably talk about this all day, I'm not gonna keep you on.
Just the misinformation that's out there. I need people like Dr. Boyd say like, no, this is what emergency medicine is guys. I don't know what you read. I don't know. Like stop reading what you're reading. Don't read it off student doctor dot net. This is what emergency medicine is. And I just love that. And like I said, that's why I highlight, I make sure like you're even on my notifications. I always know when you post it. Boom. All right. That would that because I need, because I want to know that, oh, where's she teaching us today? So I just wanted to take the time and highlight you and thank you for all that you're doing on this, that on the app and really all that you're doing for people that you may not even realize you're doing it for.
And I know you said you've been connected with a lot of people, but there's a lot of people who may not like press that DM, but they're following you and they're saying like, yes, hello with Dr. Boyd. I'm glad she's doing it and I'm going to keep moving along. So I just wanted to take the time and say your efforts and highlighting your struggle is definitely appreciated, especially from one physician to another.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Well, thank you. I'm very honored that you said that. Thank you so much.
Dr. Berry:
So you're on Instagram. Are you on any other social media platforms?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
I’m on Facebook too. It's the same thing @er.doc.mom. You can find me there too.
Dr. Berry:
Perfect. The last one, not least, I'd always ask my guest this, how is what you're doing helping to empower others to take better control in themselves especially us physicians?
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Building a community on social media where we're open and we're not afraid to tell you how it really is, has been extremely powerful. Just the connection, I've made with students, premed students, regular students, resident, it's been invaluable to me and I think also to them just being open and honest, not afraid to tell people that I sucked today, I missed the diagnosis, I'm tired. I don't feel like doing, I'm just being so open and real with people on a big social media platform like Instagram. It's just building a great community that I'm really proud of. And I hope it continues because it's great. I wish I had this when I was going through school.
Dr. Berry:
That’s where I really want to hit home the point and there are people who are watching you who are feeling the same thoughts but are jumping for joy because now they know they're not alone. So Dr. Boyd thank you for really helping us enlighten Lunch and Learn community, especially from in the eyes of emergency room physician who I know takes a hit left and right and still, for some reason it keeps going back to work because you love what you do.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
I know, right? Somehow still do. And we appreciate y'all hospitalists because I know we beat y'all up a lot of times. We appreciate you guys. I couldn't do my job without my wonderful hospitalists so thank you.
Dr. Berry:
I call it the transition of care. Thank you for letting me be a part of this patient's care. I appreciate it.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Yeah, sure. Yeah, good. Good.
Dr. Berry:
Dr. Boyd thank you and you have a great day. Like I said, appreciate all that you do and all that you do for here on the Lunch and Learn community.
Dr. Erin Boyd:
Alright, great. Well, thanks so much for having me.

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