Urologist shares what burns him out and what gives him fulfillment

“Thriving in Urology” is a new video series hosted by urologist Amy M. Pearlman, MD, of the Prime Institute in Coral Gables, Florida. Each video will contain conversations on combating burnout by cultivating balance within one's work life. In this installment, Pearlman speaks with Steven A. Kaplan, MD, a professor of urology at the Icahn School of Medicine and director of the Men’s Wellness Program at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, about what burns him out and also what energizes him.

Transcription:

Pearlman: Let's talk about and explore some of those roles that may contribute to burnout in your personal profession, as well as, what are some of those protective factors. What drains some of your energy with the typical things that you do on a daily basis?

Kaplan: It's administrative nonsense, and we all have to deal with it. But unfortunately, we caught up with regulation as opposed to patient care. I think very few of us get burned out by just taking care of a person. It's more the documentation and the regimentation. At the end of the day, you have charts to fill out and to sign, and that's not what we signed up for. And frankly, those rules weren't made by us. They were made by some bureaucrats. I remember a good friend of mine, Dr. Deepak Kapoor, who is involved in independent practice, showing me a graph that in the last 20 years, for every health care professional in the system, there's been a 3,000%, corresponding increase in administrative staff. That's insane. Right now, we're just basically replaceable commodities. And I think that's why people feel like they're unvalued. Even the term health care "provider"; we're all providers. Well, no. I mean, I value PAs and I value NPs; I think they're important. But I went to medical school and training and fellowship; I'm a doctor. The fact that there's a lack of respect at that level, I think it's just built into the system that we're just replaceable commodities. And I think that...it burns [people] out because they're doing all this work, and they don't feel valued. At the end of the day, you want to feel valued, and I know our patients value us. But you get caught up in a system of churning and churning and churning; we focus on quantity rather than quality. And now, being someone as I'm getting older, one day - and hopefully far away from now - I'm going to need health care. It's like, wow, when you get going to that system, it's treacherous. So I think that contributes to a lot of the actual problems. It's not the actual thing we went into the business to do, which is to take care of people. That's actually the fun part and the rewarding part. It's the other stuff around it. And it's not that I have a solution for it. I don't, because my solution is I do other things that bring me value as well. And everybody has to kind of figure out what that balance is. But if you don't seek that balance, you won't be happy; that, I can tell you.

Pearlman: Are there other things that drain your energy when it comes to some of the more entrepreneurial things that you're involved with?

Kaplan: Sure. I mean, nothing is a straight line. Everybody looks at the end product, and they say, "Wow, you launched this company. Oh, you're about to do another public company." And they say, "How do you do it?" I mean, so many people come over to me now with the Innovation Nexus, and I've shared some of those things, and they said, "Oh, tell us how to do it." Everybody has to do their own pathway. I have no formal business background at all. I just kind of listened. I think one of the things when you're in the system, you hear and you meet people, and you'll learn from them. And I think it's much more important to be a listener than a talker, because you'll learn from a lot of smart people. I remember saying this at the AUA Innovation Nexus, they asked, "What's the key to your success?" I said, "It's very simple. I know what I don't know." Very early on, I realized I'm not going to be a CEO of a company. I have the ideas, and I founded many companies, but I can't be the CEO. I'm not cut out for that. But I know how to connect. I know how to build a team, and I let the team go. I like to be surrounded by people a lot smarter than me. So that was for me. There are other people who can be CEOs, some of us in our field, urologists became CEOs of companies. I mean, Dr. Arie Belledegrun is a great example; Dr. Mitch Steiner is a great example of that. So there are people who have that mindset. I'm don't. But I've been very successful, because I realized that I'm not good at that, and I hired people or brought on people who were very, very good at that. And you partner and you learn and even today, I'm always learning. You can't be a super person, and nobody knows everything, and that's okay. A lot of people, I think, make mistakes in our world when they try and become an entrepreneur that they can do it all. You can't. It's tough. Businesses take so many directions. Another hint is, if you want to create something, create in a space that you know. I'm not going to create a new food, I don't know anything about food except to eat it. I'm not going to create new clothes. I have limitations, but in the health care space and technology, I'm pretty good. So that's where I evolved.

Pearlman: You had alluded to the fact that providing really good quality patient care feeds your soul. In a given day, what else energizes you and feeds your soul?

Kaplan: I've been blessed with a great family, great wife, great kids. I'm a grandfather. So there's that part of me. I mean really, the only negative thing in my life is I'm a New York Jets fan. I love the friends I work with and the colleagues I work with; I'm very blessed. I really feel very blessed by the people I'm surrounded with. I'm very positive; I have a very positive energy. I don't have the time for anger. It doesn't mean I don't get angry, but much less than the past, because I don't have the time or the energy. It's a short ride. Creativity is fun. Somebody once gave me a saying: the 3 things that make a person happy every day are somewhere to go, someone to love, and something to look forward to. I have all 3 of them. And that makes me very happy. And money is not part of it. And I can't say having a lot of money's not nice. It is. But at the end of the day, that's not what makes you happy. Some of the poorest people I know are some of the people with the most money. So that doesn't make you happy. It's really that feeling of purpose, that you have something to do, somewhere to go that you're doing something that's going to change things. And that's I think part of the burnout that some people have is, what's their purpose, and they've lost their way because they're letting other people direct them. They feel like people are dragging them. No, you've got to be the captain of your own ship. And you have to decide for yourself what that ship is and what direction you're gonna take. That will make you happy because you're back in control, which a lot of a lot of people have lost, and I think that makes them unhappy and burned out.

This transcription was edited for clarity.