Effective communication, transparency at all levels will help reduce burnout
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The COVID-19 pandemic often has been used to explain increasing burnout among health care workers.
The hope was burnout would subside as the pandemic “ended” and health care workers would resume a better quality of life. However, that has not occurred and the incidence of burnout remains high.
Christina Maslach, PhD, brought the concept of burnout to the forefront of psychological disorders. She developed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The MBI includes three primary domains: emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization. The MBI has been tested and validated in many populations, including physicians. Clinically significant burnout typically has high scores in the domains of emotional exhaustion or depersonalization.
Burnout is associated with numerous negative factors in our professional lives, including errors in judgment, unprofessional behavior, reduced quality of patient care, and other outcomes frequently measured in health care systems. Penalties for poor performance can be severe, including loss of privileges.
Much has been discussed about physician burnout. Organizations offer programs focused on wellness, coaching and resiliency. There have been short-term benefits, however, the long-term impact is unknown.
It is not possible to have an effective workforce that embraces today’s emphasis on population health, patient experience and value-based care if physicians are emotionally exhausted and feel depersonalized and disengaged from the organization. What needs to be discussed is the responsibility of leaders of the organization to foster the best environment to help resolve and prevent burnout.
Gallup Research has found employees list five factors that lead to burnout at work – unfair treatment, unmanageable workload, lack of role clarity, lack of communication and support from supervisors, and unreasonable time pressure. Leadership must ask these tough questions. What makes my surgeons unhealthy? How can we positively affect the work environment to reduce burnout? The environment must change to help reduce burnout.
Orthopedic surgeons appreciate an environment that motivates them and rewards them for their efforts. Motivation can come from caring for complex and subspecialized patients, responsibility for organizing and leading a service line or project, teaching surgeons-in-training, or developing clinical research efforts to answer everyday questions.
Job satisfaction comes from several factors, including an effective staffing model that fosters healthy relationships; assistance with non-surgeon activities, such as EMR entry; basic orthopedic care; patient counseling assistance; and compensation at fair market value. Leadership is only partially responsible for achieving this environment. We all must work together to ensure we are treated fairly and respectfully. We need to strive for best practices when looking at healthy workloads and should clarify our role, with the practice and larger organizations, to set expectations.
Effective communication and transparency are invaluable. We must develop relationships up the ladder with mentors and leaders and down the ladder with staff to build a sustainable environment to prevent and reduce burnout.
- Reference:
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/313160/preventing-and-dealing-with-employee-burnout.aspx.
- For more information:
- Anthony A. Romeo, MD, is the Chief Medical Editor of Orthopedics Today. He can be reached at Orthopedics Today, 6900 Grove Road, Thorofare, NJ 08086; email: orthopedics@healio.com.
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