It might be time for healthcare leaders to think differently about clinician burnout. Although there are pockets of success, broadscale efforts to reduce burnout have not taken hold. Roughly 50% of physicians report feeling burnout, according to the American Medical Association. Part of the problem is that leaders often link burnout with workload and the work environment. But it is far more complex than that, according to Stephen Hippler, MD, and Larry Weinzimmer. The two have been studying burnout for the past several years and found that the research on root causes is incomplete.
One of their key findings is that fortitude plays a significant role in determining whether a person can manage their wellbeing and overcome obstacles that often lead to burnout. It’s incumbent on healthcare leaders to not only understand the basics of fortitude, but to create an environment that nurtures it and allows clinicians to adapt overcome challenges.
Hippler is the former chief clinical officer at OSF Healthcare based in Peoria, Illinois and Weinzimmer is a research professor at Bradley University. In this podcast, they discuss their research and ways organizations can embrace fortitude with Oliver Wyman’s Dan Shellenbarger.
More details on their research can be found at NexusInsights.
Stephen Hippler, MD: Those who have a higher degree of grit are much more likely to succeed at school, medical school, residency, nursing school. So that passion and perseverance and grit is talked a lot about in academia. And we don't talk a lot about it in medicine.
The narrative is that it's all about the amount of work, it's about the call burden, it's about the EMR. Yet those with the skills to be able to manage all that with the least amount of frustration, we believe, are those people who will have a lower risk of burnout and a greater sense of wellbeing.
Larry Weinzimmer: Our fortitude measure explains over 40% of variance in burnout. So, we were really excited about the effectiveness and efficacy of the scale that we developed in our attempt to understand burnout better.
It’s not the individual or the organization, it's the individual and the organization. It's actually that interaction between the individual and the organization that can influence burnout. And statistically, we've found that to be very true.