Clinician care has never been more important than in today’s post pandemic-world. According to Medscape’s 2023 Physician Burnout & Depression Report, more than half of US physicians suffer from burnout, with nearly 1 in 4 also reporting depression.
Although burnout is not a new concept, Covid-19 highlighted how this condition affects more than just clinicians. It disturbs the patient’s health journey and even the functionality of the healthcare system. By carrying out strategies to improve clinician well-being, healthcare leaders not only guarantee better outcomes for patients, but cultivate greater and stronger care-communities that will thrive in any environment. It’s time to support your clinicians.
Strategies to Enhance Clinician Well-Being
Clinicians will always be the foundation for a successful and meaningful patient experience. That’s why leaders in the healthcare community must take time to foster and commit to deeper staff appreciation methods. Advocating for your providers can make great strides towards patient engagement, staff retention and the overall significance of your organization!
With that being said—here are seven strategies that focus on delivering improved care for your clinicians:
Work-Life Balance Support.
- For clinicians, time management and prioritization are essential to improving work-life balance and creating appropriate boundaries between work and home. Clinicians can’t effectively care for patients if they don’t care for themselves first. Encouraging your staff to practice self-care and explore all paid time off options will help them develop healthy cycles of rest off-the-clock. As an added support, employers should reevaluate workloads, processes, and systems on a regular basis to ensure rotations are manageable and time off is really time off.
Professional Development Opportunities.
- Most organizations understand the benefit of professional development opportunities for clinicians, but research shows these options dropped rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nurses who remained in the workforce had more patients to see, multiple different shoes to fill, and new technology to understand. Although this led to rapid skill growth, it quickly caused exhaustion and hindered career development. Now, administrators must learn to put forward development opportunities in an authentic way such as leadership pathways and certification training. Providing easy-to-access resources proves that veteran clinicians are valued and paves the way for inexperienced nurses who are entering the field.
Mental Health Support.
- Unfortunately, not all healthcare workers have access to mental health services. Start by normalizing discussions around mental health and offer confidential avenues for seeking help. By simply providing access to resources like counseling services, and on-site support networks, organizations can work towards eliminating stigma around this treatment and encourage clinicians to seek help when they need it. As leaders in care quality, administration should know their care-providers even better than they know their patients.When you know what matters to your team members, you’re able to better understand their priorities as a team member.
Collaborative Decision-Making.
- Working in care requires continuous collaboration–from everyone. Individually, nurses and clinicians need to have a deep understanding of their role to properly support fellow staff and deliver high-quality patient care. Seek their input, value their expertise, and institute methods for cooperation and collaboration between all levels of care. Encouraging open communication establishes a clear channel of communication to share ideas, concerns, and feedback directly. Dialogue rather than directives creates spaces for clinicians to feel comfortable expressing their options without fear. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across different care continuums (doctors, nurses, & administrators) leaders can leverage their unique perspectives to deliver better care outcomes.
Supportive Work Environment.
- Team Based Care = Better Care Teams. Healthy work environments are a necessity for clinicians, especially in 2024. AACN reports that nurses who work in safe and healthy workplaces report greater job satisfaction, employee engagement and experience less burnout. Plus, patients experience higher quality care and greater outcomes compared to those cared for by nurses who operate in unhealthy work environments. Quality care like this can only be achieved with effective, open, and honest communication that provides opportunities for proactive feedback (NLM). Foster a supportive and respectful workplace culture where teamwork and mutual respect are encouraged. When conflicts do occur, they must be addressed promptly to build safe and inclusive atmospheres for clinicians to focus on patient care.
Tools & Technology to Augment & Support Staff.
- When technology is correctly executed, it should help augment the human side of care. Investing in tools and technology that make your clinicians day-to-day easier will alleviate their administrative responsibilities. Automated intelligence is creating opportunities for clinicians to streamline tasks like medication refills and measuring vitals. Some examples include:
- Provide an availability status tool like CareXM for your staff. Clinicians can pre-set their work availability status and focus more on the patient at hand.
- Use electronic medical records (EMR) integrations between systems to track patient data over time and identify who is due for care, with less time consuming and error prone data entry.
- Incorporate patient engagement tools like remote patient monitoring devices.
- Collect patient call analytics data and reporting insights to show why patients call. This way your team can build programs to solve problems before they happen and cut down on repetitive tasks.
Recognition and Appreciation.
- Nursing is more than just an occupation–it’s an act of selfless dedication. Clinicians often work long hours in high stress environments providing emotional and physical care to patients. Without acknowledgement–tough workloads can lead to stress, burnout and eventually the overall failure of a healthcare system…because where would we be without clinicians in the first place? Learning to recognize and appreciate staff regularly validates their efforts and provides motivation to continue giving their best. Celebrating their contributions doesn’t have to be complicated, it just needs to come from the heart! Whether that’s recognizing their achievements–both big and small–fostering a culture of appreciation and value within the workplace, or even just a simple form of verbal appreciation. A simple sign of appreciation from an administrator can go a long way (ANN).
At CareXM, We Stand for Change.
CareXM is the kind of experienced, clinical partner you can count on to deliver the help you need to elevate your patient and caregiver experiences. Our mission is to help our partners effortlessly anticipate and respond to patient needs with triage technology backed by our on-demand triage team. Whether you need after-hours triage, our cost-saving hybrid triage solutions, or in-house triage call-center infrastructure, we help you flex and extend your care, so you reach patients in the moments they need help the most. From home health and hospice to health systems and more, CareXM will transform your patient approach to lower operating costs.
