5 ways to help physicians feel valued and prevent burnout

With long hours, demanding schedules and intense training, a physician’s work can be more of a calling than a mere job. So, perhaps it’s no surprise that research shows that health care organizations and leaders looking for a way to prevent burnout should make it a priority to show physicians exactly how much their sacrifices and contributions matter. 

“Whether or not physicians felt valued turned out to be very highly linked to their burnout rates, so that's when we really started realizing that this is an important part of the equation,” said Jill Jin, MD, MPH, an internist and senior physician adviser for the AMA. She is one of the authors of the AMA STEPS Forward^® “Value of Feeling Valued Playbook.”

Physician burnout affects every part of the nation’s health care system, from patients and employers to the physicians themselves. And the cost of burnout isn’t just an abstract one. Organizations can spend $500,000 to $1 million or more to replace a departing physician.

That’s why, as the leader in physician well-being, the AMA is reducing physician burnout by removing administrative burdens and providing real-world solutions to help doctors rediscover the Joy in Medicine®.

And while there’s no way to remove all stress from the profession, leaders can do a great deal to help physicians find and sustain their joy in the practice of medicine. With that in mind, an AMA STEPS Forward playbook offers five strategies for making sure physicians feel valued and an important part of the organization where they work.

“Working with all our organizations and speaking with physicians and leaders from many of the organizations that we've worked with, we found a few key strategies—and practical strategies—that organizations can use,” Dr. Jin said.

1. Find opportunities to give physicians schedule flexibility and autonomy

   1. Patients don’t always need medical treatment at convenient times, so physicians naturally can’t have total autonomy over their days. But even taking that into account, organizations can give some freedom to physicians to create a work schedule that doesn’t steamroll their well-being. For example, giving opportunities to work from home via telehealth, optimizing panel size, and including nonpatient scheduled time for panel management and administrative work all make a big difference.
   2. There’s also common ground to be found. For example, physicians and organizations both want patients to see their own doctors for urgent issues, as this continuity leads to the best care possible. Finding ways to optimize the schedule template to promote this continuity of care is a goal both physicians and practice managers share. .

2. Create a culture that allows and promotes PTO

   1. Physicians are taught from the beginning of their training to put their own needs aside for their patients’ well-being, but what happens when what’s good for the physician is also good for the patient? That’s certainly the case for taking enough time off—and enough restorative PTO, during which a physician can fully recharge.
   2. Organizations and leaders should encourage “real PTO” and ensure that there is no financial penalty for physicians who take it. It’s crucial to develop a coverage plan for physicians who are out of the office so that colleagues aren’t overburdened and no one returns to a dispiriting amount of catch-up work.

3. Help physicians develop professionally in a way that works for them

   1. There are a multitude of development paths available to physicians throughout their careers, and it can help both reduce and stave off burnout to spend at least 20% of work time on matters of particular interest.
   2. Organizations should encourage physicians to explore and grow in topics such as teaching and medical education, entrepreneurship, research, patient and professional community engagement, and health systems administration and leadership, in addition to their clinical practice. These conversations between physicians and their leaders should take place as part of regular reviews but also during check-in discussions and informal chats.

4. Make resilience a part of the physician’s well-being toolkit

   1. Self-care won’t fill all the gaps when a health care organization hasn’t solved the systemic problems that cause burnout from overwork and overstress. But the inevitable stressors that arise can become less of a long-term problem when physicians are given aid in bouncing back.
   2. Organizations can take specific actions to reduce the mental load on physicians, and the doctors themselves can find ways to prioritize their well-being. Perhaps most importantly, when mental health becomes an issue, physicians should be supported and never put through punitive or overly intrusive credentialling and re-credentialling processes that ask unnecessary questions with no connection to their current capacity.

5. Support physicians during and after traumatic events

   1. The very nature of a physician’s job means they will experience trauma, whether that happens through witnessing it in their patients, as an individual or as part of a group. It’s not always possible to prevent those injuries—which can be physical or psychological—but there are important ways to make the care team’s safety a priority.
   2. During and after the traumatic events that do happen, organizations and leaders should offer support in a variety of ways. Peer support groups, suicide prevention and response plans, confidential mental health services and sensitive credentialling processes all go a long way toward helping physicians get back to well-being. Create a culture of organizational resilience to aid everyone in times of collective trauma.]

AMA STEPS Forward® open-access resources offer innovative strategies that allow physicians and their staff to thrive in the new health care environment. These resources can help you prevent burnout, create the organizational foundation for joy in medicine and improve practice efficiency. 

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