It's no secret that demands on training physicians are at an all-time high. The National Academy of Medicine says competency requirements of a 21st-century physician have resulted in an expanding increase in workload – one of the many factors leading to burnout and attrition in students, educators and administrators in medical education.
So, how do you know when you're burnt out? The WHO describes burnout as "chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." It can present as feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one's job, cynicism related to one's job and reduced professional efficacy. And this is the last thing we want for any professional, but especially the educators, leaders and physicians and healthcare professionals who've stepped up to train or care for our health.
While a myriad of factors can contribute toward burnout, the Stanford Social Innovation Review says burnout is a collective issue and "impossible for an individual to fix without a systems perspective."
Structural causes of burnout in healthcare educators
Thomas P. Reith wrote in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science that medical professionals consistently cite "too many bureaucratic tasks (e.g., charting, paperwork), spending too many hours at work and increasing computerization of practice (electronic health records (EHRs))" among the top factors that drive burnout.
Reith says on average, physicians spend 2.6 hours per week managing these bureaucratic tasks, enough time to see nine additional patients. And, these tasks are often completed outside of working hours, adding to the physician's total work hours – another cause of burnout.
Faculty well-being is a critical concern, especially in an educational environment. The National Academy of Medicine says "faculty well-being may influence teaching behaviors and the experience of learners," which can impact medical student burnout. Furthermore, the Academy found that burnout can even affect the quality of patient care delivered by trainees, suggesting that burnout trickles down as far as impacting patient care.
In the current digital age, the increased computerization of practice may be inevitable. And, while initial learning curves and hard-to-use tools may contribute to added stress in the short-term, the long-term benefit of automating cumbersome processes and increasing oversight is often exponential. However, to see benefit in the implementation of program management tools, program leaders must have the support, professional guidance, even if external, time and training that aligns a solution with their individual program needs and propels educators, residents and students to reach their goals.
While wellness programs in the workplace, an $8 billion industry in the United States, have good intentions, they often address the symptoms, rather than the root causes of burnout. Harvard Medical School published a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that workplace wellness systems had no overall impact on the issues they intended to remedy and "failed to improve basic workplace metrics."
The COVID-19 pandemic didn't help the situation, either. Nikolis, Wakim and Adams said in BMC Medical Education that the COVID-19 period brought on a significant decrease in overall wellness, including less confidence in medical education – exacerbating burnout of both medical students and administrators. Further, with U.S. medical students suffering higher rates of burnout-related conditions, such as depression and anxiety, it's likely that declines in student engagement only add to the ever-growing list of stressors faced by medical educators.
Now, more than ever before, it is critical that medical education programs look to alternative solutions, such as software automation or management solutions, that allow their leaders and educators to take back control of their time and prioritize their passion for empowering the next generation of physicians and healthcare professionals.
Combating system-driven burnout
By integrating technology and/or tools that promote streamlined, automated processes, healthcare education program leaders can address structural causes of burnout, rather than continuing to address the symptoms. Healthcare education programs can look to process efficiencies to combat burnout in three key ways:
#1: Reduce unnecessary manual, redundant or high-touch tasks through automation
By reducing manual, redundant or error-prone activities with automated and optimized processes, healthcare educators can address structural causes of staff and trainee burnout.
Digital management solutions with tools like MedHub's prepopulated forms or curriculum mapping technologies can offer immense time savings, preventing the long work hours and excessive paperwork that contribute toward burnout.
#2 : Provide easy-to-access tools that make mandatory tasks less burdensome to complete
Robert M. Wah, former president of the American Medical Association once said, "Physicians want to provide our patients with the best care possible, but today there are confusing, misaligned and burdensome regulatory programs that take away critical time physicians could be spending to provide high-quality care for their patients."
Reducing paperwork and cumbersome manual processes tied to managing evaluations, scheduling, logging and tracking hours and monitoring student progress can provide significant time savings for medical education staff and students.
#3: Gain additional insight into student data to manage work hours, understand trainee performance and identify low performers for early intervention
Resident physical and emotional stress can be significantly reduced by positive, satisfying learning environments during training, the University of Arkansas College for Medical Sciences says. Creating learning environments that closely monitor student performance and provide opportunities for early intervention can be critical in establishing supportive and positive environments for trainees.
O'Marr, Chan, Wong, Samuels and Boatright said in the Journal of the American Medical Association that medical training experiences are largely influenced by "two important components of the learning environment: faculty interactions and emotional climate."
Supporting educators with resources to simplify processes and manage student progress can positively impact a program's emotional climate by reducing stress and providing an optimal learning environment for trainees.
In using a solution like MedHub with advanced reporting features, programs can ease student stress by building an environment that promotes growth and recognizes when additional guidance or support may be valuable.
Case in point: Institutions using MedHub have access to important data points to gain oversight to review and identify opportunities for improvement with more than 150 measures, with reference data. And users save time by leveraging 100+ out-of-the-box reports; many of which relate to student burnout.
The Solution to Combat Systemic Burnout
Medical education programs can improve the efficiency of their processes and ward off burnout at the source with the right help at their fingertips.
For evidence of MedHub's power in driving change at the system level, view our success stories.