Lonely planet is OK, but why lonely physician?

Excerpt

Physician burn out is a well-accepted reality, yet, an under-reported and under-actioned problem facing the medical community. The traditional human-centric and touch-based practice of medicine, where most illnesses are diagnosed by either clinical inspection, physical palpation or auscultation, has now given way to technology-based imaging modalities, which require very little patient interaction. Infact, most investigations today are being done in an automated mode, overlooked by technicians and reported at the back office located remotely, for example in Asia for North America. These ‘Non Face-to-Face’ encounters, as against the ‘Face-to-Face’ encounters of yesteryears, seem to be contributing in a large measure to the isolation and physical and mental loneliness of the physicians. Though all this seems intuitive, it is just the first time that Kulkarni et al. [1] have looked at this matter in more details, including the drivers of physician loneliness and the opportunities that exist for meaningfully ameliorating them. …