Clinical obstetrics and gynecology
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Clin Obstet Gynecol · Sep 2019
Interventions to Reduce Burnout and Improve Resilience: Impact on a Health System's Outcomes.
With the continuously changing health care environment and dramatic shift in patient demographics, institutions have the responsibility of identifying and dedicating resources for maintaining and improving wellness and resilience among front line providers to assure the quality of patient care. Our institution, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (OSUWMC), has addressed the goal to decrease burnout for providers in a multistep, multiprofessional, and multiyear program starting firstly with institutional cultural change then focused provider interventions, and lastly, proactive resilience engagement. We describe herein our approach and outcomes as measured by provider wellness and health system outcomes. ⋯ To reduce the incidence of burnout, improve resilience, and ultimately improve patient outcomes, a health system must identify and prioritize a commitment and dedication of resources to develop and sustain a multimodal and interprofessional approach to change. These initiatives at OSU originated with cultural transformation allowing the acceptance of change in the form of mindfulness training, resilience building, and the engagement of organizational science, so as to demonstrate the outcomes and impact to the health system and academic peers. Herein we describe the work that has been done thus far, both published and in progress, to understand our journey.
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We contend that work ambivalence is a key building block in fostering physician burnout and its sequalae, while engagement in meaningful work and receiving family support for that work enhances resilience. No singular approach to curbing burnout in OBGYN physicians has received empirical support. Clinical experience suggests that curbing physician burnout requires a combination of workplace redesigns, positive leadership behaviors, and resilience training that teaches practical applications from the fields of resilience, emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and relationship systems. This paper highlights organizational and leadership interventions that foster physician engagement, and describes how physicians can foster personal and family resilience.