Expert examines six drivers of burnout, organizational resilience
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There are six major drivers of physician burnout, all of which can be addressed by effective leadership, according to a presentation at the Ending Physician Burnout Global Summit.
Paul DeChant, MD, MBA, said that burnout is driven by the workplace rather than the worker.
“It’s not a lack of personal resilience. We take highly trained professionals and put them into a clinical workplace that’s very dysfunctional and requires us to be constantly vigilant and focused in order to do our work successfully,” DeChant said.
The six driving factors of workplace burnout are a chaotic work environment, loss of control, insufficient rewards, breakdown of community, the absence of fairness and conflicting values. DeChant said that work overload is often caused by a combination of time pressure and information overload, which leads to cynicism that drives the remaining five factors.
To address these issues, DeChant said that “transformational leadership” that centers on more than simple productivity is necessary.
“Just as we have to work at a patient initially to address their physiological dysfunction, we need to work at the organization and do a diagnostic workup on it to understand what’s wrong,” he said. “Then we can develop a treatment plan for the organization.”
A key part of an organization’s treatment plan is effective staff “huddles,” which allow health care providers to offer each other acknowledgement, prepare for the day and solve problems before they grow into larger issues. DeChant said that health care leaders should make sure they are seen and heard by staff when they attend these huddles.
Organizational changes during the pandemic proved that “health care is capable of rapid change.”
“In the heat of the pandemic, clinicians cared for their communities as health care heroes. Now it’s time for leaders to step up and transform the clinical workplace,” DeChant said.
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DeChant P. Empowering organizational resilience by addressing the root cause drivers of burnout. Presented at: Ending Physician Burnout Global Summit; Aug 24-26, 2021 (virtual meeting).
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