Why does financial sense matter?
Why does financial sense matter?
It matters for so many reasons. It matters because it gives us, as humans, financial freedom (potentially). Why does that matter? That matters because once someone has financial freedom, there is more power of choice. We get to choose how we spend our time instead of being bonded or shackled to a system where we have to work. What if we get to choose to work, and work on our terms? Finance is not something that is taught in medical school. It should be. It is a life skill, just like swimming or cooking. It's important to understand how debt works. It is important to understand how to maximize our paycheck to work for us. I am no expert. However, it is the drive to understand this that I think is important. And in medicine, we are lifelong learners; it is important to apply that same principal to every aspect. How do we optimize financial health? How do we optimize our time? How do we exercise freedom and our choices in life? How do we spend our time? These are all important. It is important to live a life that is truly ours by our choice, by our design. Medicine has lost that as physicians have lost control.
How does this relate to physician burnout? It relates because system is driven by entities outside of the exam room, including but not limited to: CMS, insurance companies, private equity companies, and venture capitalists. Three of these entities put profit before people. It is tarnishing the patient physician relationship. Eventually, I fear a lack of care or a gap of care because of the lack of reimbursement or the lack of resources. Lack of physicians will be part of that lack of resources. The system’s values do not align anymore with physicians values or any other clinicians. We did not go into medicine for the money. We went into medicine because of our call to service and to heal. When we cannot do that in the exam room because of time constraints due to rising costs, it is important to understand finance even more…to keep the doors of solo practitioners or small practices open. It is important to keep the doors of small community hospitals open. And it's important to understand in order to supplement and drive innovation. It is important to understand and to help maybe provide physicians with options as to how to pivot within medicine or even outside of medicine. Burnout or moral injury, pick your nomenclature, it's not the fault of the physician. It is the system that has lost its meaning it's core values. We as physicians come as human beings should not lose our core values and a system that does not care about us. However, we keep caring about each other in about our patients. We are still the change that we would like to see. By having financial sense and financial literacy, we can get rid of those golden handcuffs and have more room to pivots. We can create the life that we want not now but eventually.
