Provider burnout hinders cancer care quality
A look at how burnout affects providers, their patients, and the centers that employ them.
Clinician burnout is a frequent problem in clinical oncology. It can affect oncologists’ effective communication with patients, the quality of care delivered, and the physical and emotional well being of caregivers-creating retention and turnover challenges for cancer centers.
During the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2016 Annual Meeting in Chicago, attendees heard more about provider burnout during the June 6 session, “Curing Burnout in Oncology: Mindful Self-Compassion, Communication, and Practice.”
HlubockySession presenter Fay J. Hlubocky, PhD, of the University of Chicago, department of medicine, section of hematology/oncology, recently spoke to Managed Healthcare Executive (MHE) about burnout in healthcare professionals.
MHE: How does healthcare provider burnout affect providers, their patients, and the centers that employ them?
Hlubocky: Healthcare clinician burnout greatly impacts all parties leading to potential significant undesirable consequences for all involved. For the clinician, unaddressed burnout causes personal and professional consequences that affect the individual’s physical and emotional health. Feelings of emotional exhaustion or cynicism are important core signs. Professionally, clinician burnout contributes to diminished quality care, reduced satisfaction, and a poor sense of overall accomplishment. Work-life balance is affected.
Patients may find it a challenge to communicate effectively with these clinicians, which greatly influences the quality of the clinician-patient relationship. From an organizational perspective, clinician wellness is essential to the success, sustainability, productivity, and financial strength of group practices and hospitals. Clinician burnout has a powerful effect on the quality of patient care, safety, patient satisfaction as well as contributes to employee turnover, absenteeism, and retention.
For these reasons, addressing clinician burnout and promoting wellness must become a priority to the healthcare community as a whole.
MHE: What are the main factors that contribute to burnout?
Hlubocky: Many studies have focused on individual contributing factors responsible for clinician development of burnout in healthcare. Individual contributing factors have been defined as internal dispositional risk factors consisting of sociodemographic (for example, age, gender, marital status, trainees) and personality (for example, conscientiousness) characteristics.
However, given the changing healthcare system, recent research equally centers on both individual factors, as well as specific external, environmental, occupational, and organizational risk factors identified as significant contributors driving burnout. Examples of identified external factors include increased time in direct patient care, high occupational demands, lack of control over daily tasks, increased administrative responsibilities, use of electronic health record systems, limited decision-making, unclear job expectations, lack of social support, educational debt, and the evolving medical landscape.
The identification of internal and external contributors is necessary in order to help us promote and tailor both individual and organizational interventions designed to target burnout in clinicians.
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