Harness the power of the humanities to counteract burnout [PODCAST]

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“Humanities can be seen as part of the fabric, society, and culture of human experience. In many ways, they might be seen as the disciplines that make us human and make life meaningful. They broadly encompass ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, visual and performing arts, such as music and theater. Even more expansively, they may also include, amongst others, history, archaeology, anthropology, law, and linguistics. These diverse fields explore and foster empathy, compassion, beauty, joy, awe, love, reasoning, tolerance, curiosity, possibility, community. Are we richer as human beings or physicians without this education, or are we abandoning ourselves to the loneliness, sadness, and despair of a more sterile, rigid, negative, and dysfunctional way of thinking?”

Jacqueline Huntly is a family physician and physician coach.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Medicine for the soul: Harness the power of the humanities to counteract burnout.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Jackie Huntly. She is a preventive medicine physician and a physician coach. She wrote the KevinMD article “Medicine for the soul: Harness the power of the humanities to counteract burnout.” Jackie, welcome to the show.

Jacqueline Huntly: I’m delighted to be here, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: We’ll get into the article a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Jacqueline Huntly: Yeah, sure. Well, I’ve kind of had a very eclectic background, with my family living in different countries when I was growing up. A lot of this was following my physician father, who was a geographical pathologist and then particularly moved into cancer research. That triggered my interest in medicine, but also particularly in the fields of public health and disease prevention.

I went to medical school in England, in Birmingham, England, and then we moved to the States. I’d done some residency work in family practice in England, and then I finished training in family practice and preventive medicine at UNC in Chapel Hill and at Emory in Atlanta. I received my MPH in epidemiology, and that was when I was particularly interested in looking into preventative medicine.

When I was running a women’s wellness center after my training, that’s where I became particularly interested in the worried well. This kind of played into my background of prevention. These are patients who aren’t necessarily seen as sick, but they are very stressed, and they certainly aren’t thriving. I began to look at other tools at that time that I felt could help them, other than therapy or drugs, and that really took me into the fields of exercise, nutrition, yoga, and meditation. Along with that, I also began to explore aspects of the humanities, whether it was in narrative medicine or other things that might be of value for these patients.

I was working at the VA in Atlanta and actually had a very powerful experience of seeing this in action. I had the privilege to see the organization Theater of War and to hear about their work with veterans and PTSD and traumatic brain injury. I heard the testimonials from the veterans after they had watched the play Ajax by Sophocles, how they found that this was the first time they’d ever heard their story told, and that just seeing it done through theater was extremely powerful for them. So that really reinforced this concept, you know, to me, that there are many modalities that we might be using, not only for patients, but also for physicians.

My last position was in clinical medicine, and I was on the faculty of a family medicine program. I was asked to be part of that program to teach lifestyle medicine and preventive medicine, and also to introduce the residents to the concepts of mind-body medicine. This was working both with patients and with the residents, but alongside that, I also incorporated aspects of narrative medicine, particularly the work of Rita Charon, and also introduced them to music and other disciplines, such as gardening and entrepreneurship. So it’s really trying to expand all the resources that they might use to further their education, but enhance how they would interact with patients.

I’d received coach training prior to that, and I used it with my patients there, but then I found I was working a lot with my actual colleagues, and I became more and more interested in physician well-being and leadership. A unique opportunity that I had there as well was that I met the conductor of the Savannah Philharmonic Orchestra. Peter Shannon, who’s now director of his own institute, the American Institute for Music and Healing, was actually instrumental in bringing a lot of innovative programs to the Anderson Cancer Center there. So we collaborated, and continued to collaborate. He was bringing music to patients, but we expanded that to how can we use music in addressing physician well-being, burnout, and leadership skills, and whether that would have any application there.

Kevin Pho: All right, so let’s transition into your KevinMD article, where you talk more about that intersection between the humanities and health care. It’s titled “Medicine for the soul: Harness the power of the humanities to counteract burnout.” Now, for those who didn’t read that article, just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it.

Jacqueline Huntly: Yeah, it came out of an experience I had. I heard from a friend about a physician she knew who was working in a very demanding job. This physician was describing how she was doing yoga and meditation and exercise, and they were all actually beginning to feel, at that time, like more work. It was work. And yet she really didn’t feel that just going to a hot bath and a glass of wine, or whatever drink of choice, was going to really help her de-stress and also manage the conflicts that she was having at work.

So after that conversation, I was thinking about the people I had known, particularly the inspirational people I’d known in medicine, people who I often call, to myself, the wise healers. Not only were these people excellent clinicians, but they were also influential and thriving leaders, and they just radiated compassion, humility, and humor. They also had a strong dose of common sense.

But the more I thought about them, I realized that all these individuals had pursued interests outside of medicine, in many different fields, whether it’s music, literature, or art. Even though these might be seen as hobbies or just pleasurable pursuits, it seemed to me that they might have been instrumental in giving these people more skills, and that they really were almost like creative crucibles. These activities, which were often in the humanities, really had taught them something about how to cultivate joy, or being mindful, or communication, how to be creative and compassionate.

So when I was thinking back to this physician and what she was describing, I knew she was a musician, and I wondered. I thought, I wonder if really what might be invaluable now is returning to her music and reincorporating that into her life, as a way not only to regain balance, but to even find more perspective and equanimity in the work that she was doing at her job.

Kevin Pho: So physicians come from a variety of backgrounds. Of course, we have physicians who come from a pre-medical science background, but we have a lot of physicians who are wonderful doctors who also come from a humanities background. Now, for those doctors who are experiencing burnout and fatigue and who actually don’t come from a background in humanities, how do you propose incorporating some humanities into their current life?

Jacqueline Huntly: Well, obviously it depends, to a certain extent, on where they’re at in their career. Ideally, if it were in medical school, it would be ideal to see if this can be incorporated, as is being done in certain medical schools and residencies, into their training. As we all know, narrative medicine started to be incorporated, and art and theater, and I mentioned those in the article. So ideally that would start early.

If you’re looking at physicians who are in practice, I would say the biggest step is, first of all, to give themselves permission. Permission to say, “I need to explore something else. I need to give myself the time, and I need to find something that resonates with me, that I think I would enjoy,” and just say, “I have an open mind to the exploration.”

So this could be, depending on what they gravitated to, they might have been a reader. As I mentioned in the article, I had actually, for a period of time, because of lack of time, given up other reading, and I felt not only the missing of pleasure, I felt I missed perspective, I missed other points of view, I missed learning, life learning.

So I think the first thing is to think about the things that they know they might be interested in, or something they’ve always wanted to explore, and just go ahead and engage in whatever that might be. Music is a common one. Many physicians have musical interests or musical backgrounds, and to re-engage with that, and re-engage with it as being a very valuable tool for them, that it will have benefits. Just be open to the possible benefits, not feeling like that is a waste of time, and just maybe seeing it as an exploration and bringing a curious mindset to it. So I think you start with what you might be interested in right away, and then look at the opportunities that are out there.

Kevin Pho: I’ve talked to so many physicians who have that background in the humanities. There are plenty of physicians, for instance, who are musicians. I was a musician myself before I went into medical school. And a lot of them say that the humanities improve their skills as doctors. It improves their relationships with patients. Can you talk further about how the humanities can make physicians better doctors?

Jacqueline Huntly: Yeah, I think, well, let’s take music, for example. If you just take the idea of music as a listening skill, people who come from a musical background, who’ve been engaged in it, have learned how to really listen, you know, to really get the impact of the music. They’ve learned how to pay attention, to really actively be present with what they’re hearing. And we all know that with patients, one of the biggest challenges sometimes is that we’re not present, we aren’t actively listening. Or even with our colleagues, we’re all waiting to say what we want to say.

So I think, just using music as an example, the great value with music is there’s no intermediary. It’s just you and the music. You just listen, and you pay attention. On top of that are the emotions you might experience, seeing the emotions that are activated when you listen to music, and just learning how you manage those emotions when they come up. So that’s one example, with music.

When you look at art, there’s been some really interesting work, and in the article I mentioned Mangione. He mentions the experience of looking at art and how that can be extremely valuable, particularly if you’re looking at medical students and residents, to observe, to really pay attention, and what do you see? I think we all know that the more we really train our eye, the more we see, but the untrained eye doesn’t see. So looking at art, and doing that in a skillful way, can really train your eye to observe. So those are just a couple of examples where I think it can be really valuable.

The other way that I’ve been exploring, particularly with music, coming back to music, is when you are present and listening to others, it really opens the door to communication. So it really enhances not only what you might be hearing and taking in, say, from a patient, but how you interact with your colleagues and other people. So it really has an impact, or could have, on conflict and interprofessional communication.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Jackie Huntly. She’s a preventive medicine physician and a physician coach. She wrote the KevinMD article “Medicine for the soul: Harness the power of the humanities to counteract burnout.” Jackie, you’re a full-time physician coach. Can you share some of the challenges that you’re seeing in your physician clients and some of your top tips that you’re recommending to help them?

Jacqueline Huntly: Yeah, what I see with physicians is there’s really often a loss. Apart from the characteristic feelings of exhaustion, fatigue, and lack of time, there’s a sense of a loss of meaning and purpose, in all the characteristics that we associate with burnout: meaning and purpose, the inability to experience joy. Physicians often feel they have to go it alone if they’re struggling, and so this feeling of isolation can be very strong. There’s often a strong collusion of silence between physicians. They don’t share what’s going on for them. In addition, communication and conflict challenges are very, very real. And I just think there’s a general sense of feeling often very trapped, that they’re working in environments that they’re not thriving in, that may not even reflect their values, but they don’t know how to shift gears, either be part of the solution or just move on.

So what I see in coaching, the biggest thing that I feel I have to offer as a coach, is the idea that self-care is extremely important, that it starts with yourself, and that by starting with self-care, and particularly self-compassion, these are not self-absorbed, selfish things to do. These are the doorway into actually thriving once again as a human being, and by doing that, you are ultimately going to be able to thrive as a physician. And inevitably, if there is no taking care of yourself and managing yourself, you will burn out.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: What’s your take-home message that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Jacqueline Huntly: What I would like to leave them with is to feel that even though there may seem to be many obstacles, and that we’re living in chaotic, changing times, to always maintain a sense of possibility and hope, and to reach out for support whenever you need it, and to know that you’re not alone in this, that many people are facing these challenges. And to just build a whole web of support for yourself, and just always stay engaged, that your future has possibility.

Kevin Pho: Jackie, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

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