Reflecting Back on 2022

George Courtney, CMDA’s Vice President of Stewardship and Legacy Giving, joins Dr. Mike Chupp to discuss how God has been at work through CMDA during 2022, while also looking ahead to opportunities for ministry in 2023.

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CMDA in Nigeria

Dr. Kayode Iyun, President of CMDA Nigeria, talks about how Christian healthcare professionals are making a difference across the continent of Africa.

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Honor the Lord with Thanksgiving

Pastor Bert Jones shares a special message about the importance of honoring the Lord this Thanksgiving.

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Healthcare Heroes

Col. Doug Soderdahl, MD, a urologist who recently retired from the U.S. Army, talks about military medicine and today’s healthcare heroes serving in the armed forces.

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Finding Margin in the Midst of Burnout

Dr. Ted Hamilton, an expert in the field of physician well-being, talks about what leads to burnout and how to overcome it and find margin.  

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CODE YOU

Phyllis Morton and Tamara Ramirez, two nurses who developed a continuing education course for nurses to overcome burnout, discuss their ministry on this week’s CMDA Matters podcast.

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How to De-stress in Your Distress

I picked up the phone to return a call from a message I had received on my office voicemail earlier that day. The call was from a doctor. I called the doctor back and said, “Hello, this is Pastor Bert from CMDA returning your phone call, how can I help you?” After a pause, he responded, “Thank you for calling me back; I don’t know how much longer I can continue to practice in this environment.” As he continued to download the heavy burden he was carrying, I realized the doctor on the other end of the call was in distress. It was a 911 call for spiritual help. Unfortunately, that phone call is becoming all too common and frequent in my office.

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Transformative Trust

Dr. Sartori from CMDA’s Center for Well-being produces a monthly podcast called The Healthy Doctor. This is a great resource for taking care of our healthcare professionals. If you enjoy this episode, you can find more at cmda.org/wellbeing.

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The Mountaintop

Photo: Pixabay

Burnout is the current buzzword in healthcare, the subject of endless articles and editorial commentaries. Fatigue, depersonalization and cynicism characterize this happiness-ruining and career-destroying disease, which has reached epidemic levels among healthcare professionals across the country.

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Burnout at the Broom Tree

Photo: Pixabay

I had no idea what burnout was until it happened to me…twice…on two different continents. Actually, I knew what it was the second time, and I felt like I should have known better and seen it coming.

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A Lack of Self-care in Healthcare

Photo credit: Army Medicine on VisualHunt.com / CC BY

How many times have you gone to clinic when you were sicker than the patients you were treating? Listened to other people’s woes and stresses when your own were weightier? Given your last emotional resources to a patient whose need was less than your family member’s? Forfeited sleep while advising a patient of how curative it is? Advised a patient about nutrition and exercise right after scarfing a quick lunch from the vending machine?

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Sharing Experiences and Decreasing Isolation in Healthcare

Photo: Pexels

An article crossed both my inbox and my Facebook feed this week entitled “Here’s Why Women Doctors Need Time Together.” It certainly wasn’t an academic study, but, as a woman physician, I was intrigued by the title. One sentence summarizes the author’s major premise: “There is an amazing power in gathering, shared experiences and decreasing isolation.” And I agree. When I watch my kids play sports or perform, I gather with other parents who share that experience—and we cheer as loudly as we can. When my marriage needs refreshment, my husband and I gather with other couples who share the experiences, both joyful and difficult, of marriage—and the isolation of our challenges is decreased.

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Facing the Rise of Suicides in Healthcare

Facing the Rise of Suicides in Healthcare

As a second year medical student, a member of my medical school class committed suicide. I didn’t know him well, but his death impacted me. Made me ask a lot of questions. Why didn’t I know him better? Had I gotten to know him, could I have made a difference?

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Feeling the ‘Burn’ in Burnout

There is absolutely no question that physician burnout is on the rise in medicine today. Numerous studies have supported the reality that physician burnout rates range from 30 to as high as 65%, depending on specialty. Burnout, of course, isn’t a ‘disease’ a physician would prescribe medicine for, or even necessarily diagnose in one of his or her patients. But it is a ‘dis-ease,’ to be sure. Burnout is a long-term stress reaction, which includes emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a lack of sense of personal accomplishment. For a certainty, Christian doctors are not immune to the effects of burnout, and one of the primary elements of CMDA’s coaching ministry is helping Christian doctors manage and address the challenges of burnout in medicine today.

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Are You Suffering from ‘Hurry Sickness?’

Are You Suffering from ‘Hurry Sickness?’ December 16, 2016

Author Lewis Grant describes a condition he calls, “Sunset fatigue,” end-of-the-day behaviors he says may indicate that an individual has been “infected” with hurry sickness. Here are some of the symptoms he has identified. Sound vaguely familiar?

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Physician Burnout

visual hunt

It was a relatively slow evening at work when I got the text. My phone vibrated on the clinic countertop as I was looking over a chart. “Are you busy? Can you talk?” I figured those words couldn’t be good, coming as they did from a young intern I mentored when she was a medical student. I found myself wondering if she had lost a patient.

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