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Over the years, many studies have shown an average of one in three doctors deal with symptomatic physician burnout in the office at any given day. Surveys recently are showing over 50 percent burnout rates in doctors in the U.S. However, by making a few changes in your office, you can help reduce physician burnout.
1. Know the Causes of Burnout
A 2017 report showed spending too much time at work, bureaucratic tasks and feeling like just another insignificant member of a large medical facility where to leading causes of doctors feeling burnt out. Then you add those to having to make time for EHRs, needing to balance extra administrative work (like creating the schedules) and the normal stress that goes along with working in healthcare, doctors can quickly become wiped out.
2. Listen to Your Doctors
For you to resolve burnout, you must first understand what's causing it in the first place. Burnout can be difficult to detect. You can't just look at a doctor and predict based off their specialty or demographics whether or not they're burnt out. You have to actually hear it directly from your doctors.
A listening campaign is your first critical step to addressing burnout. Before you can decide on a solution, you must first pause and listen since burnout can look different from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor. So, the key to success is to listen first and get an understanding of the issue.
3. Let your Physicians Exercise Some Independence
To prevent burnout, you should give your doctors the ability to use their best judgment when they deliver patient care.
In a survey with over 1,000 doctors on athenahealth's network, a company found physicians were not as likely to report burnout symptoms when they have the independence to practice at the tops of their licenses.
Athenahealth research showed administrators would be better off trusting their doctors and create structures that enabled optimal patient care delivery and loosen strict rules to restore joy to practicing medicine.
4. Use Physician Scheduling Software
As a fundamental issue, burnout can be due to how the schedule is set up. A poor schedule can overwork doctors, not provide enough restful time away and limit adequate time-off requests. So, how do you balance the probability of burnout when you're the one who's creating the schedule?
Simple, make the emergency medicine scheduling system easier. Since burnout problems stem from having a poor schedule and being overworked, use shift scheduling software to create fair and balanced schedules for all providers and shifts.
Scheduling software that uses weighted rules can help to balance out holidays, weekends and on-call shifts without the complicated and slow-moving manual editing. It can help build fair schedules for all physicians and staff. Your whole team will appreciate a fair and timely schedule creation process. ByteBloc schedule software can help you too beat physician burnout.
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