Long shifts, competing obligations, and seeing or hearing about challenging patient experiences can all cause stress while working as a healthcare professional. You probably work longer hours, spend less time with loved ones, and experience more stress as a responder to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
You can be dealing with the mental health repercussions that various kinds of calamities, including public health emergencies, frequently have simultaneously. In light of this, you might be observing symptoms of stress and discomfort in both yourself and your coworkers. This article examines steps hospital management can take to assist and lessen employee burnout.
- Establish a peer support program: This enables medical professionals to share their experiences and strategies for coping with one another.
- Introduce team-based care: Team-based care assists in rebalancing and redistributing duties, which can significantly lessen burnout and stress.
- Maintain a list of well-being resources: As was stated in the previous sentence, many doctors are unaware of resources that can help their well-being. By offering an updated list of options, including childcare, transportation, mental health, and more, you can reduce stress and anxiety among your team.
- Ensure leaders receive sufficient training: Hospital leadership is crucial even in normal circumstances but becomes considerably more critical during a pandemic. In the battle to reduce physician stress and burnout, making sure leaders have sufficient training is essential. One of the keys to surviving the COVID-19 epidemic is having strong leadership.
- Promote virtual feedback sessions – To provide physicians the chance to discuss their experiences and feelings, consider creating virtual feedback sessions, also known as resilience rounds, similar to peer-to-peer support groups. The feedback from these sessions might also be used to address any urgent requirements.
- Hold virtual town halls for talks – Hold virtual town halls to update personnel on new protocols and tell them of important news in order to prevent essential communications from getting lost in the shuffle. Town halls are also a fantastic chance to address your team's queries.
- Offer support programs to allay anxieties – Keeping a list of support options is a fantastic strategy to combat physician stress and burnout, but going above and beyond and offering some of the services can have an even more significant impact. Consider, for instance, giving staff members concerned about exposing their family to COVID-19 hotel accommodations.
Instruments to Help Physicians Decrease Stress and Burnout
Technology can improve burnout when used inefficiently or incorrectly, but when used correctly, it can also lessen stress and burnout. There are numerous ways to prevent burnout, but the best ones focus on the main issue: processes. As was already said, 89% of doctors claimed that stressful or expanded workflows contributed to burnout. Technology ought to always make the duties of doctors simpler. Technologies that can simplify and streamline procedures include:
Time can be saved by using artificial intelligence (AI) software that offers real-time patient insights and predictive analytics.
- Automation Software: Automation software automates repetitive operations, such as calling patients to remind them of appointments, which saves time and streamlines workflows.
- Software for managing orders: Software for managing orders simplifies the ordering process.
- Telehealth: There are several ways that telehealth can help to lessen stress and burnout. Notably, telemedicine gives doctors a secure way to communicate with patients, guaranteeing that patients get the care they require and that doctors don't risk contracting COVID-19. When used with other programs like AI and voice technologies, efficient telehealth solutions can help reduce workloads and save time.
- Voice Transcription: By removing the need for doctors to record notes manually, voice transcription solutions like 3M M*Modal Fluency for Imaging can save time. In addition, since they don't have to turn away from the patient to record their notes, doctors can give patients more face time, improving the patient experience.
Collaboration to Decrease Burnout and stress among doctors are already very problematic. It has only gotten worse as a result of COVID-19. However, employing efficient technologies that lighten workloads and adhering to the seven steps to minimizing pandemic-related stress outlined above can aid in the fight against this expanding issue.
Reference
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.00549/full
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25722
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253903#
- https://healthcare.ipro-inc.com/blog/manage-pandemic-related-physician-stress-and-burnout/
- https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/6-ways-address-physician-stress-during-covid-19-pandemic
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