Peak Performance for Physicians: Managing Our Energy, Time, and Priorities

There is an epidemic of physician burnout in our modern world of corporate medicine. The cost of this epidemic is enormous—for physicians and their patients, as well as health systems. A common analogy is the Canary in a Coalmine. The Canary (the physician) is gasping for breath in the toxic system. Some physician wellness experts say that the solution is to fix the coalmine. In Peak Performance for Physicians, Dr. Flynn promotes a second approach: making the Canary so strong and resilient that it can thrive despite the unsolvable toxicity.Dr. Flynn describes his journey of Mistakes Made/Lessons Learned in managing energy, time and priorities. He synthesizes insights from many sources of wisdom and translates them so that they apply to our life as physicians in a way that can lead to immediate life improvements.Dr. Flynn has lectured across the nation on this topic for more than 15 years, and many colleagues have been urging him to put it all together in a book. Dr. Flynn recently became a victim of rapidly progressive ALS and is no longer capable of sharing this content by lecture, so it was clear the time is now to write it up with the hope that many physicians will benefit. He hopes to be useful long after he is gone.So: if you are a medical student, resident or fellow, read this book and prepare for your future. It will launch you towards peak performance from day one, avoiding many common mistakes made by young physicians in practice. If you are in the first half of your career—hurry! Read this book so you can make the “halftime adjustments” to improve your life (and for some, survive). If you are a physician in the last half of your career, don’t worry—there is still time to adopt these peak performance techniques to help you thrive. Maybe more importantly, read this book so you can better mentor students, trainees and junior colleagues on their journey towards peak performance—you will be very useful to them! Read more