BACK of the BOOK
The Break Room
A look at the social side of medicine
HOW DO WE SOLVE A
“PROBLEM” LIKE MILLENNIALS?
recently moved and, while I was packing, unearthed one of my daughter’s old trophies with the
inscription: “Summer Bowling League Participant.”
Yes, we live in the age of the millennials: a generation of entitled, coddled, endlessly supported
children whose need for that praise and approval
continues into adulthood. Or at least, that’s what we’re told.
This isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon; the older
generation has been lamenting the work ethic of the next
for ages. My mentor, Bayard Clarkson, MD, the fellowship director at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,
once told my trainee class, “Don’t come in here complaining about how hard you work unless you get in before I
do in the morning and leave later than I do at night.” So
we didn’t – even though we spent the same number of
hours every in the lab and clinic every day.
So, what’s changed?
The Generational Divide
“You need three millennials to do the work of two doctors trained 20 years ago” is a common refrain among the
older generation of doctors. Those of us running large
clinical programs have watched attitudes shift among
the new recruits out of fellowship. All too often, we are
quick to judge them as being lazy, selfish, uninterested,
and guilty of a shift-work mentality. And, to top it all off,
these new recruits seem to be constantly “burned out.”
Last year, the dean at my institution added a question
about burnout in our annual self-evaluations. The Baby
Boomers – those with 7,000 to 8,000 relative value units
(RVUs) and productive academic careers under our belts
– rated their burnout level as zero; the millennials who
just barely cracked 2,500 RVUs consistently rated their
burnout level as significant.
Really? They’ve only been doing this for a couple years!
To help better understand the epidemic of burnout
among these early-career doctors, our department held a
retreat that brought together members from each generation. One brave millennial stood up to argue his case: As
a hospitalist, he worked 10 days in a row and then got
seven days off. The murmurs among the Baby-Boomer
doctors in attendance had a general air of disbelief (and
a touch of anger): “Seven days off out of 17 – that’s what
he’s complaining about?!” No sympathy there.
Despite the incredulity of so