PHYSICIANS office RESOURCE FEBRUARY 2017
Physicians in clinics with chaotic work environments have a significantly higher likelihood of leaving the practice within two years .
Preventing Physician Burnout Curing the Chaos and Returning Joy to the Practice of Medicine
By Paul Dechant , MD , MBA & Diane W . Sharron , MD ( This article is an excerpt from the book of the same title .)
Mark Linzer ’ s research identified workplace chaos as one of the key predictors of physician stress , burnout , and intention to leave . A recent analysis of the data showed that physicians in clinics with chaotic work environments had significantly more stress and burnout and a higher likelihood of leaving the practice within two years . These clinics also had significantly more missed opportunities to provide preventative services and had significantly higher rates of medical errors .
Our experience and that of many of the physicians we interviewed confirmed the importance of workplace chaos in the development of burnout . Diane identified workplace chaos as the most important factor in the burnout that led her to leave clinical practice . Craig Albanese , MD , MBA , senior vice president and chief operating officer at New York- Presbyterian / Morgan Stanley Children ’ s Hospital and Sloane Hospital for Women , pointed to the chaos and unstable work environment as the driver of his increasing interest in taking on administrative roles . He sensed that “ there ’ s got to be a better way .” According to John Toussaint , MD , CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value , the workplace prior to implementing a Lean transformation at ThedaCare was replete with inefficiencies . “ Physicians , nurses , and administrators and everybody else were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off because all the processes were chaos . There was no standard work . You did it one way on Monday , another way on Tuesday , and a third way on Wednesday . There was no predictability .”
Toussaint told us that he and other leaders hypothesized that if they created predictability through standard work , the organization could focus on defect identification and problemsolving at the source . This approach , they believed , would lead to a more stable environment for caregivers and for patients . He described an informal study he did early in the organization ’ s Lean journey . He shadowed a nurse for a week
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