“You can’t take the canary, teach it to be more resilient, and stick it back in the same coal mine and expect it to survive. You need to focus on the coal mine.” Experts weigh in on the current physician burnout crisis.
Reports of escalating burnout among clinicians in the United States have reached record levels, prompting urgent calls for systemic changes within healthcare institutions. The prevalence of burnout among physicians has shown an alarming increase over recent years. Factors contributing to this surge include extensive work hours, burdensome administrative tasks, and exposure to workplace violence. What can be done about it?
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has acknowledged the burnout issue and launched the new Impact Well-being campaign. It's aimed at healthcare facilities, urging leaders to make structural changes to reduce the strain on healthcare workers. Instead of just focusing on individual doctors, this campaign looks for organizational solutions.
“You can’t take the canary, teach it to be more resilient, and stick it back in the same coal mine and expect it to survive,” Heather Farley said. “You need to focus on the coal mine.” Farley is the chief wellness officer at ChristianaCare, a network of private, non-profit hospitals. ChristianaCare is among just a handful of organizations working to implement programs that go beyond personal resilience and address health care workplace culture and efficiency.
A crucial part of the campaign involves using tools like the NIOSH Worker Well-Being Questionnaire and advocating for the removal of mental health questions from hospital admission applications. These changes aim to create an environment where it's encouraged to prioritize mental health without fearing professional consequences. “Like everyone, healthcare workers deserve the right to pursue mental health care without fear of losing their job because of stigmatizing and discriminatory questions”, J. Corey Feist, cofounder and president of the Dr Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, said in a statement.
Moreover, the campaign provides hospital leaders with supplementary resources such as supervisor training modules and questionnaires designed to pinpoint areas within the healthcare system requiring improvement to better support employee well-being.
The campaign follows a survey study conducted among 1.373 physicians and faculty members representing various specialties and career stages of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization. The study spanned from 2017 to 2021 and revealed a concerning trend: burnout declined from 2017 to 2019 but significantly rose to 50.4 % in 2021.
These findings emphasize the imperative need for urgent systemic changes within healthcare institutions to mitigate the rising tide of physician burnout. Failure to address this issue poses a severe threat to the US healthcare system's capacity to deliver quality patient care.
Meanwhile, another study unveiled the positive influence of their physician peer support program on doctors’ well-being and medical department cultures. The study analyzed the impact of the so-called Peer Outreach Support Team (POST) program in two hospitals. The idea is that the opportunity to meet confidentially with trained peers can create alternate, more acceptable healing pathways than traditional approaches such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) or psychological counseling. Nearly 85 % of the survey respondents who took part in a POST meeting said they would recommend the program to another department.
“It’s important that rather than having outside clinicians provide support, we are getting peer support from our colleagues who understand the environment we work in and who experience the same challenges,” said senior author Dana Sax who works at one of the hospitals where the program was started. “We hope that sharing our experience implementing the program and our findings on the study’s effectiveness will encourage similar programs to be more widely adopted.”
Sources:
Ortega et al. Patterns in Physician Burnout in a Stable-Linked Cohort. JAMA Netw Open, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.36745
Tolins et al. Implementation and effectiveness of a physician-focused peer support program. PLoS One, 2023. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292917
Image source: Ray Hennessy, unsplash
