97-hour workweek nearly kills radiologist
A radiologist is sharing the story of one anonymous peer who nearly died after working 97 hours in a week.
Indiana University’s Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD, has been publishing anecdotes about members of the specialty driven to burnout and moral distress. His hope is to help humanize previous surveys that have shown the prevalence of such workplace fatigue across radiology.
In July, Gunderman highlighted a female rad who told him overwork nearly drove her to suicide. Now the noted physician and professor is detailing another anecdote—this time of a radiologist employed at a prominent unnamed academic medical center. Its radiology department has reportedly been unable to recruit or retain physicians over the course of 10 years, with the rad seeing his workload increase sixfold during that time span.
The institution reportedly had a policy requiring radiologists to interpret each case the day an imaging exam was performed, forcing the individual to sometimes stay as late as 3 a.m.
“One especially busy week, during a month when he was required to work more than 20 call shifts, he reached Friday having put in [his] 97th [hour] of work, and he had so little time for rest that he had been sleeping on the floor of his office,” Gunderman wrote Sept. 1 in Academic Radiology. “At about 1 p.m., while reading a case, he suddenly noticed that he was losing vision.”
A visit to the emergency department determined the radiologist had dangerously high blood pressure, placing him in a hypertensive crisis. ED providers put him on IV therapy and his vision returned, with the rad returning home on BP medications. He was later struck blind again, returned to the hospital, and received a stroke workup. The radiologist reportedly remains permanently blind in one eye, with treating providers determining his long hours had prompted the health scare.
“I never would have thought that work conditions could kill me, but it turns out they can. I thought I was invincible, but I was wrong. I have limits, and I need to respect those limits,” the individual—who has since switched jobs and reduced his blood pressure, though vision loss still lingers—relayed to Gunderman.
“It is no good putting in such long, intense hours that you cannot have a life. It is literally killing people, and it almost killed me,” the anonymous radiologist added.
Gunderman shared his colleague’s story in the context of a June report from the American Medical Association. It found that radiologists are among the top 3 specialists with the highest intent to quit their job, based on a survey of over 18,000 physicians across 43 states. Docs shared factors that might motivate them to stay in an organization, including higher pay, enhanced workflow efficiency, more consistent staffing, less documentation and after-hours work, and fewer EHR hassles. His piece explores some of the same themes as two recent editorials from the Cleveland Clinic’s Subha Ghosh, MD, MBA, on radiologists reportedly “quiet quitting” from the profession.
Gunderman shared three possible ways in which radiologists can address challenges like the one outlined in his story:
- Take a more active role in setting standards for quality, efficiency and workloads.
- Train and develop radiologists as leaders who can play a more active role in guiding healthcare organizations toward better care.
- “We can do everything in our power to ensure that radiologists are never treated as mere units of production but instead as human beings who care, indispensable partners in ensuring that we can thrive at work and provide the same kind of care we would wish for a loved one.”
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.