Doctors and nurses are knowledge workers who make important decisions about others’ health all day long. They do not function well under top-down, command & control management. They thrive when empowered. Leaders who align with us around shared success help end #burnout

Working as an FP for 25 years, I wanted empowerment to fix things that went wrong in my clinic. When I became CEO of a 300-physician group, the thought of all 300 docs fixing things their own way worried me that we’d fall apart from entropy. We needed #empowerment & #alignment.

Moral injury in medicine is something that affects each and every one of us. We are honored to have our resident expert and author of IF I BETRAY THESE WORDS, Wendy Dean featured in this piece from NYT Magazine by Eyal Press. It nytimes.com/2023/06/15/mag…

Steerforth Press NYT Magazine Eyal Press At last, it’s out!

Do #healthcare leaders with a #clinical background lead differently than those with a business background with no #PatientCare experience? Does it help for #executives to understand the operations of the organization they lead? Not 100%, but mostly yes to both. #burnout

1st driver of #burnout is work overload - links to #exhaustion. Docs spend 2/3 of time on wasteful work. Significant investment in workflow redesign can “flip the ratio” to spend 2/3 time on meaningful work. To end burnout, invest in redesign. Best #ROI you can get. #FlipTheRatio

The Stanford WellMD Professional Fulfillment model focuses on personal resilience, practice efficiency, & culture of wellness, which includes #leadership. Hospitals that improve broken relationships between C-level leaders and #physicians to reduce #burnout & staff shortages.

#FathersDay is about appreciating those who know us, care for us, and sacrifice for us. Mission-driven #Doctors and #nurses sacrifice for those they don’t know every day. Our connection to that mission is key to reducing #burnout and enhancing professional fulfillment.

I lost a friend to #suicide yesterday. He was not a clinician, but had lost hope due to severe chronic illness, despite being surrounded by loving friends and family. As #healthcare leaders, we must create workplaces where clinicians do not lose hope. Let people know they matter.

Empowering clinicians to enable them to thrive, requires aligning clinicians to enable the organization that supports them to thrive. When we’re #cynical, we tend to diss our organization and its leaders. It’s important for #leaders and #clinicians to align on goals and #values.

#RespectForPeople is the first principle of #Lean & is key to preventing #burnout. Respecting people means reducing the 5 drivers of burnout: - work overload - lack of control - insufficient reward - breakdown of community - absence of fairness - conflicting values Make sense?

#3 driver of #burnout is “Insufficient Reward”. Start your daily #huddle with an acknowledgement/appreciation of something specific a team member did to help you out. When someone knows that what they do matters, they feel less burnout. 3rd dimension of burnout is #Inefficacy

Choose your analogy: 1) Managing physicians is like herding cats 2) Leading physicians is like getting eagles to fly in formation I prefer #2 Physicians will resist top-down, command & control micro-management They will thrive when lead with empowerment and alignment.

30 years ago, most #physicians were independent small business owners who ran their business well. Now most physicians are employed and are expected to follow orders more than think for themselves. #healthcare leaders who empower physicians realize greater success. #burnout

A sense of #inefficacy is one of the three dimensions of #burnout. It’s a sad irony when this happens in an exam room, two people come together, the patient finding great value in the interaction while the burned out #physician wonders if s/he is making any difference at all.

Health systems are struggling with short staffing and financial losses. A key root cause = #clinician #burnout #Leaders can fix this. It’s time to make #healthcare workplaces healthy places for clinicians to work.

The 5th driver of #burnout is Absence of Fairness. For clinicians this happens at a macro and micro level. Macro: The job we’re doing now is NOT the job we signed up for when we committed our lives to this profession. It feels like a bait and switch. Micro: I’ll discuss tomorrow

The 5th driver of #burnout is Absence of Fairness. For #clinicians this happens at a macro and micro level. Micro: Being treated differently, not based on your contribution, but on things you have no control over - your gender, race, country of origin, or sexual orientation.

#1 Driver of Burnout: Work Overload Many physicians do not get true PTO. - Comp is productivity-based so time off decreases income. - Many bring laptops on vacation to keep up with 300% increase in inbasket messages It’s impossible to recover without down time. #physicianburnout

The 6th driver of #burnout is values conflict. Are you working for an organization whose actions conflict with your values? Have you witnessed, or had no choice but to participate in, activities that violate your values? This is all too common for clinicians these days.