Beware: minor dips in the incidence of reported burnout do not constitute real progress

The Well-Being Index, developed at the Mayo Clinic, is one of the better and better-known survey tools for gauging burnout. The WBI publishes an annual survey of its users around the world. The latest edition, released in December 2024, is the "State of Well-Being 2023-2024" -- a summary of 79,000 user assessments gathered throughout 2023. Physicians were the largest number of participants at 22,914; residents and fellows at 12,928, nurses at 9,209, APP's at 7,250, and "employees" at 20.475. Dentists and med students comprised the balance.
The good news is that "only" half of healthcare workers reported feeling burned out -- a slight improvement from 2022's results (54%). Pharmacists reported the highest rates of burnout at 62%. The rates for physicians and nurses declined somewhat year-over-year: from 60% to 52% for nurses and from 53% to 51% for physicians.Â
With 1 out of 2 healthcare professionals still reporting burnout, the results can hardly be claimed to show material progress. Indeed, the fractional year-over-year improvement is more likely a function of modest "post-COVID epoch recovery" than the result of substantive, sustainable improvements in the work environment. At the same time, I do see that more hospitals are finally paying attention to creating more flexibility in staff scheduling practices -- an important dimension to achieving greater work-life balance -- as well as planning to implement AI-enabled scribes and other solutions to reduce the EHR data entry and retrieval burden that falls so heavily on clinicians of all types.  Â
With a looming shortfall of healthcare workers of well over 100,000 by 2028, hospital, health system, and medical group practice leaders need to focus on making selective, strategic changes to the workplace and in management practices for there to be a meaningful reduction in the burnout burden. Those who make the necessary changes will become a more attractive setting to recruit and retain clinicians. Those who fail to appreciate the pre-eminent role of senior leaders in tackling clinician burnout will find that their organizations increasingly struggle no matter how large their service portfolio, their endowments, advanced technology, or strong their market position.
Solutions for Hospitals, Health Systems, and Medical Group Practices:Â Leadership-Driven Changes
The locus for curing clinician burnout and staffing challenges runs through the C-suite. Here are examples of leadership-driven changes to the workplace that my colleague Paul DeChant, MD, MBA and I often recommend:
> Regard clinicians as knowledge workers who are given significant latitude to make clinical decisions without unnecessary administrative encumbrances or delays
> Consistently apply one or more of the improvement sciences (Lean, Six Sigma, operations research, agile, design thinking) in consultation with front-line staff to improve workflow and reduce delays, waste, inefficiency, and job skill mismatches
> Expect all leaders, but especially senior executives, to do periodic job shadowing of front-line staff (where observing and deep listening are emphasized) in lieu of "rounding" (a largely ineffectual, if widely practiced activity)
> Create and require leader standard work (LSW).
> Develop and deploy a sophisticated, deeply ingrained, and rigorous daily management system (DMS) supported by visual display boards or monitors
> Judiciously invest in AI/ML solutions -- selected, tested, and endorsed by front-line staff -- that eliminate or at least markedly reduce data entry, administrative requirements, and/or repetitive tasks that are non-value add
> Support near-continuous optimization and remediation of the EHR (there's no such thing as "it's all set")
> Get rid of superfluous or outdated policies, procedures, redundant approvals, and other stupid stuff (GROSS)
Ready to transform your hospital or workplace?
Are you frustrated by mistrust or even adversarial relationships between front-line clinicians and senior leadership? Organizational Wellbeing Solutions was formed to enable senior leaders to identify the specific drivers of clinician burnout in their organization; and to support leaders in designing and executing a comprehensive plan to stop clinician burnout, increase retention, and improve operating results. A hallmark of our consultancy is correcting the all-too-frequent distrust and alienation Clinicians feel toward the C-Suite generally and the CEO in particular. Let us help you help your organization and its clinicians develop a more trusting, aligned, and productive working relationship.
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