3 responses to “Presenteeism”

  1. Thank you so much for this thought provoking article!
    I am teaching at UofT, wellness and women in medicine and leadership are topics of great interest to me, and I read your review with curiosity!

  2. Fantastic article! Totally hit home. Even though I’m blessed with a stay at home husband, I still find myself responsible for the “mom” stuff–planning vacations, going through the kids outgrown clothing and shopping for new, helping plan extracurricular stuff.
    Recently, I had a bad sinus cold. I should have been home. But I worked with a mask on because I had full clinic days and important meetings. How could I let everyone down?

    We need to advocate for DOCs–doctors on call–just like teachers have TOCs. Then we won’t feel the same guilt. Nurses don’t have a problem callling in sick. Why do we?

  3. I wholeheartedly agree with this article and the reasons for not calling in sick as a physician who is also concerned about: “coverage for shifts, anticipation of workload upon return, and concern about the comprehensiveness of care that patients would receive in the physician’s absence”. I would suggest that while advocacy and challenging the cultural norms in medicine are important steps in encouraging compassion amongst our medical colleagues, we have really yet to address any of these very legitimate concerns. While I empathize with and recognize the need to take time off for an illness, last minute practice coverage is notoriously difficult to come by even in multi-physician offices and especially given the vast amounts of daily paperwork. Being able to do so is luxury that is further limited by the burden of the high overhead costs of private medical offices. The fact remains is that there are not enough hands on deck to ensure that we are able to provide the quality of care expected of us 24/7 by the College should we take this time off. Until something significant is done about providing urgent clinical relief for doctors without the potential for seriously jeopardizing patient care, it is unlikely that we will see pervasive practice change, and substantially reduce the current rates of physician burnout.

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