Dr. Susan Landers suffered from burnout after 32 years of practicing in the NICU. She serves to educate others about this condition. She speaks to doctors and healthcare organizations about risk factors for and causes of burnout, and effective methods to treat and prevent physician burnout.
Suffering from burnout late in her neonatology career, Dr. Landers has valuable experience. She recovered using effective methods to foster her own mental health. These included reduced hours, less night call, a change in practice location, getting out into nature, meditative practices, music therapy, exercise, and more. Psychotherapy also played an important role in her recovery.
Her keynote message is “Physician Burnout is Preventable.” She serves to educate others about the causes and treatment for burnout. In her talks, she emphasizes gender and specialty-specific risk factors for burnout, the influence of workplace location, the electronic medical record, and other workflow factors that contribute. She describes the screening tools available to assess physicians (and other healthcare providers). She teaches physician practices some effective methods to treat burnout, promote wellness, and manage their ongoing mental health. In addition, she instructs healthcare organizations how to identify organizational impediments to workflow, and how to create efficient structural changes in healthcare organizational operations, specifically those that lower rates of physician burnout.
