Healthcare worker burnout is a growing concern, especially among clinicians in the early stages of their careers. Long hours, heavy workloads, and lack of control over schedules can lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout. Below, we’ll explore the workforce management solution that can help alleviate these challenges and improve work-life balance for clinicians in the early stages of their career.
The Burnout Epidemic - How It Affects Clinicians That Are in the Early Stages of Their Careers, And Thus Patient Care
What is burnout in healthcare? It’s a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress and overwhelming work demands.
For healthcare professionals, burnout can be characterized by:
- Feelings of detachment
- Cynicism, and
- A sense of ineffectiveness in their work.
When clinicians are just starting their careers, they are the most susceptible to burnout. They face heavy workloads and long hours. The work is demanding. They are under immense pressure to learn and adapt quickly to their new roles. On top of that, they might feel a lack of control over their schedules and work-life balance. It’s enough for anyone to experience emotional exhaustion and compassion fatigue!
What Happens When Healthcare Workers Burn Out?
Think of a clinician fresh out of residency or fellowship and eager to make a difference. They sign on, excited to help take care of patients. Then, the long hours and heavy workload set in. They feel the weight of burnout bearing down on them.
It's not just about feeling tired or stressed. It's a deep sense of exhaustion that seeps into every aspect of your work.
It’s impossible to give anything the care and attention it needs when you’re feeling the effects of burnout. Anyone who has ever suffered from burnout can relate. You can’t concentrate - it’s all but impossible. You might make mistakes you wouldn’t normally make. In the worst cases, you just go through the motions and as a result, lose that sense of connection and empathy that drew you to medicine in the first place.
Coworkers, patients, and everyone around someone who is burnt out - they can feel that disconnect. Burnout can strain trust and rapport in a moment, and take forever to build back up.
Some Burnout Stems from Administrative Burdens and Challenges
When healthcare organizations and administrators do not operate efficiently, it can lead to a trickle-down effect that negatively impacts the workforce, particularly clinicians in the early stages of their careers. These administrative burdens and challenges contribute significantly to burnout, as they add to the already heavy workload and stress that clinicians face. Some of these issues could include:
- Manual processes and paperwork overload: Clinicians often find themselves drowning in additional paperwork and forms on top of their patient care responsibilities. Completing new privileges, re-privileging, credentialing, payor enrollment, and state licensure can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Organizations that implement seamless processes, such as pre-filled forms and easy checklist tracking, can help ease the mental load and administrative burden for their teams.
- Delayed onboarding: When clinicians experience delays in their start dates, it can create a poor first impression of the organization and lead to frustration and anxiety. Streamlining the onboarding process and ensuring that clinicians can begin working as scheduled is crucial for maintaining morale and reducing burnout.
- Last-minute scheduling: Lack of advance-scheduling can be a major source of dissatisfaction for clinicians. When schedules are provided at the last minute, it becomes difficult for clinicians to plan their personal lives, leading to a poor work-life balance. Organizations that prioritize scheduling 3-6 months in advance can help their teams feel more in control of their schedules and reduce stress.
- Roster shortages and uncovered shifts: When organizations do not have enough team members to fill their schedules, clinicians may be required to pick up extra shifts or work overtime. This can be particularly burdensome for medical directors, who often bear the brunt of covering scheduling gaps. Organizations that proactively monitor for new hire timing, terminations, and leave/absences can mitigate these issues by planning in advance and securing relief staff through locums or cross-credentialing.
- Lack of variety in schedules and work types: Inflexible work schedules and the intense demands of bureaucratic tasks and patient care can contribute to burnout among healthcare providers. By cross-credentialing providers to different care settings and locations, organizations can offer a wider array of flexible, gig-based, and non-patient-facing work opportunities. This approach allows clinicians to use different skills, work with diverse patient populations, and tailor their careers to better fit their personal needs and professional aspirations, ultimately promoting work-life balance and reducing burnout.
- Inequitable scheduling and lack of rest periods: Ensuring that schedules are balanced across team members is crucial for preventing burnout. All clinicians should share the burden of the toughest shifts and on-call duties. Organizations should track night and weekend ratios across team members and set capacity rules on the maximum and minimum number of shifts per clinician. Additionally, monitoring the number of consecutive shifts or hours worked is essential to ensure that clinicians receive appropriate rest periods.
- Inadequate staffing relative to patient volume: When clinician staffing levels do not align with patient volume, it can lead to increased stress and workload for the healthcare team. Organizations that leverage data and set warnings on staffing ratios can help managers stay on top of over- or understaffing, ensuring that teams are adequately staffed to handle the number and acuity of patients.
- Payroll errors and lack of transparency: Inaccurate paychecks can be incredibly frustrating for clinicians, particularly those just starting their careers. Moreover, a lack of transparency regarding the components of their compensation, such as shifts worked, reimbursements, and bonuses, can lead to confusion and dissatisfaction. Organizations must prioritize accurate and transparent payroll processes to maintain trust and reduce financial stress for their clinicians.
By addressing these administrative burdens and challenges, healthcare organizations can create a more supportive work environment that reduces burnout and improves job satisfaction for clinicians in the early stages of their careers. Implementing solutions like RosterOps can help streamline processes, optimize scheduling, and provide the necessary data and insights to make informed decisions that prioritize clinician well-being.
How RosterOps Approach Can Improve Your Clinician Satisfaction and Reduce Burnout
What is RosterOps?
RosterOps is a collaborative approach that aligns recruitment, credentialing, operations, and finance teams to efficiently deploy clinical workforces within and between healthcare organizations. It is a holistic framework that promotes cross-functional collaboration, streamlined processes, and data-driven decision-making to optimize workforce management. By breaking down silos between departments and fostering an integrated approach, RosterOps aims to deliver high-quality patient care while achieving financial targets and improving clinician satisfaction.
How can RosterOps help my clinician teams?
RosterOps addresses many of the pain points we’ve shared and provides solutions that can significantly improve clinician satisfaction and reduce burnout.
Streamlined paperwork
RosterOps allows you to set up document automations and smart forms for approval routing and pre-filling forms from a single profile. This streamlines the paperwork process, reducing the administrative burden on clinicians.
Efficient onboarding
RosterOps helps define your ideal onboarding process and unites teams across recruiting, credentialing, operations, finance, and legal to ensure goals are met with cross-functional collaboration. This leads to a smoother and more efficient onboarding experience for clinicians.
Proactive roster management
With RosterOps, you can leverage data-driven decision-making and forecasting to proactively monitor your roster and add staff when shortages arise. This helps prevent understaffing and ensures adequate coverage for patient care.
Flexibility and adaptability
A united system like RosterOps makes it easier to deploy and cross-credential clinicians, allowing them to experience different types of patient populations or shift times. This flexibility can help improve clinician work experience and foster a more collaborative and supportive community.
Schedule equity and burnout prevention
RosterOps enables you to ensure fair and balanced scheduling practices, such as equitable distribution of night and weekend shifts, setting capacity rules, and monitoring consecutive shifts or hours worked. These features help prevent burnout by promoting rest and work-life balance.
Data-driven staffing decisions
RosterOps provides data-driven insights to help you make informed decisions about staffing levels based on patient volume. This ensures that your teams are adequately staffed to meet patient needs without overburdening clinicians.
Payroll transparency and accuracy
With RosterOps, you can improve payroll transparency by providing clear breakdowns of shifts, reimbursements, and bonuses. This transparency, along with accurate payroll processing, helps build trust and reduces financial stress for clinicians.
Prevent Burnout Among All Clinicians With RosterOps
Healthcare organizations can take proactive steps to prevent burnout among all clinicians, not just those in the early stages of their careers. The RosterOps framework offers a comprehensive solution to address the root causes of burnout. With this approach, you can:
- Automate paperwork
- Simplify onboarding
- Reduce administrative burden
- Ensure adequate staffing
- Be more transparent, and so much more!
By addressing the administrative, operational, and personal factors that contribute to burnout, RosterOps empowers healthcare organizations to create a supportive and sustainable work environment for all clinicians.
If you're ready to empower the next generation of healthcare professionals to build a brighter future for the industry, it's time to give RosterOps a closer look. Schedule a demo of Kimedics today and see firsthand how this innovative solution can transform the work experience of all your clinicians. Book your demo now!
