This post is the last of a four-part series on how to acquire and retain hospital-based clinicians. It discusses the need for leadership to address the problem of clinician burnout by offering a true work-life balance.
Burnout is a problem for all clinician specialties, including emergency, hospital, and critical care medicine. Since hospital administrators ultimately bear the burden of each department’s stability, installing safeguards against burnout is vital.
The causes of burnout are numerous, including: patient-related stress and fatigue, too many bureaucratic tasks, spending too many hours on the job, and insufficient income. These factors affect physician well-being and lead to poor performance, lower patient satisfaction scores, increased errors, alcohol and drug abuse, and even thoughts of suicide.
To retain the best clinicians, hospital administrators must make preventing burnout a priority. To do so, administrators must commit to providing strong departmental leadership, appropriate staffing levels, a supportive practice environment, and perhaps most importantly: work-life balance.
As an administrator, you can’t avoid the inherent unpredictability of hospital-based medicine. You can make a conscious effort to support your clinicians and create a culture that promotes work-life balance by considering the following:
