Three Ways Healthcare is Taking on Clinician Burnout
It’s no secret that clinicians across the U.S. are dealing with record levels of burnout. According to BDO’s 2023 Clinician Experience Survey , 61% of healthcare leaders say their top clinician morale challenge in the past 12 months was compassion fatigue and burnout.
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Fortunately, the data also showed that healthcare leaders are taking this challenge seriously and are exploring ways they can improve the clinician experience at their organizations. In today’s newsletter, we’ll take a closer look at these tactics, based on findings from our survey of 153 clinician leaders, including clinical and executive leaders.
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Tactic 1: Streamline your technology.
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One common pain point for clinicians is technology. When a healthcare organization has multiple different tools that are poorly integrated or that clinicians haven’t been trained to use, it can make it that much more difficult for clinicians to do their jobs. It also makes administrative work even harder, which can take time away from patient care. Thirty-nine percent of healthcare leaders cite difficulties using digital solutions as a top morale challenge from the past 12 months.
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Reevaluating your digital solutions and ensuring they’re as easy as possible to use can significantly improve the clinician experience. It’s also a good idea to see if any of the tools at your organization are redundant and should be phased out. Finally, consider offering training sessions to ensure clinicians feel confident using their day-to-day technology, especially if the technology in question is new or has just been upgraded.
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Tactic 2: Seek input from your clinicians.
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Clinician burnout can have many sources, including demanding workloads, increasing administrative responsibilities, and poorly integrated technology. The best way to identify clinicians’ top pain points is to ask them directly. That’s what 49% of healthcare leaders plan to do in the next 12 months in order to boost clinician morale.
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Beyond identifying the problems, engaging clinicians through surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one meetings can help providers secure buy-in for both large- and small-scale changes, ensuring they get morale improvement initiatives right the first time. These inputs can also help you design a change management plan that works for your clinician population, which is especially important when implementing a new tech solution.
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Tactic 3: Increase access to wellness resources.
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Addressing burnout isn’t an easy fix—clinicians suffering from burnout may need access to mental health resources to overcome it. That’s why we’re seeing 42% of respondents saying they’ll invest in clinician mental health resources in the next 12 months.
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When offering mental health and wellness resources, it’s important to offer a broad range of support options. Every person is different, and what works for one person may not work for another. Diversity in your offerings can help you better serve more of your clinicians. It may also be necessary to take time to address the stigma surrounding mental illness and encourage clinicians to find a solution that works for them.
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These are just a few tactics we’re seeing healthcare leaders use to address clinician burnout. But there’s much more to the story behind burnout, including the role emerging tech will play in addressing burnout long-term and how patient engagement levels can worsen clinician morale.
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To learn more about the factors impacting the clinician experience — and how healthcare leaders are handling them — read our full survey report.
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?What do you think is healthcare's biggest clinician experience challenge? Let me know in the comments below.
Thank you Nicole . We often forget the human element.
Transformational Leader | Health Informatics Expert | Health Systems Expert | Digital Health Advisor | Healthcare Consultant | Amazon Bestseller Author | MD (Foreign Medical Graduate)
1 年Well written article. Thanks for sharing. You're spot on about health tech and issues of interoperability. Sometimes it's easy to throw a tech to a problem, but often that not some systems don't talk to each other and we're creating more problems.