Even in a Year Like This ... Physician Wellness Leaders are More Important than Ever ... here's why ...

We are nowhere near the end of the human suffering and massive economic impact of the pandemic of 2020.

The Old Normal is gone. It is all hands on deck - as you treat COVID-19 patients directly or are working to ramp your practice back up again. 

The New Normal has yet to emerge from the whirlwind.

Will recent recommendations of the National Academy of Medicine cause meaningful action to address the burnout epidemic?

• Will we look back 10 years from now and say 2020 is when everything changed?
• Do calls for a "positive work environment" mean anything when there are no recommendations on HOW to accomplish that feat? 
• What happens in the C-suite when this call to address physician burnout clashes with the organization's drive to maximize profit and shareholder value? (even non-profits must have a margin!)

In this blog post let's do two things:

2) Give you a copy of the full recommendations so you can do two things:

1. 1. Print off two copies and carry them with you at all times.
   2. So when the opportunity arises, you can drop them on your CEO/CMO/CFO's desk and ask that they be adopted in your organization. If your boss can be influenced by consensus statements like this, you want to be ready for their teachable moment. 
      

The Training and Support to become an Effective Physician Wellness Champion

Our 2020 dates are set for both Spring and Fall deliveries of the Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat. Check your schedule now to see which date works for you.  

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Including How to SAVE $500 as an Early Bird
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If you are being called to lead the Physician Wellness movement, this unique training and comprehensive support system are keys to your effectiveness.

Chief Wellness Officer - CWO - does your organization need one?

It is all the rage in leadership circles these days. The mucky mucks are all in agreement. If your organization is serious about preventing burnout, the very first thing you need to do is appoint a Chief Wellness Officer - and watch the angry, dark clouds of burnout lift - revealing the rainbows and unicorns of a happy, healthy physician workforce.

This is Magical Thinking of the highest order

Let's drink the CWO KoolAide for just a moment ... to recognize it is just another version of checking a box.

This C-Suite executive will be your savior, your cavalry cresting the ridge, your knight in shining armor, your hero among the bean counters. At the very least, they should be able to stop the rest of the C-suite from hammering the doctors into little tiny pieces.

Would your people or your organization actually benefit from installing a Chief Wellness officer - CWO

The answer of course is "IT DEPENDS"
[ And for 99% of healthcare organizations a CWO is a distraction from building a wellness program in the first place ]

"We can't talk about physician burnout, everyone will go part time"

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This is Blog Post #275
Complete Blog Library is Here
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This article kicks off a mini-series of blog posts documenting my experience of Silly Things Physician Leaders Say About Physician Burnout. This first example is a great place to begin - a surprisingly frequent CMO/CEO exclamation - often used as justification for continued attempts to ignore the obvious presence of physician burnout.

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"We can't talk about physician burnout, everyone will go part time"

That is a major subconscious fear of some healthcare administrators and physician leaders. Sometimes they will actually say these same words to your face. If you happen to be the wellness champion in your organization, that statement is usually part of a paragraph that includes "things were OK around here until you showed up".

Quadruple Aim FAIL Diary:
How to Sabotage Your Physician Wellness Program From the Start

Healthcare's new Quadruple Aim recognizes happy, healthy patients can only come from happy healthy doctors. Quadruple Aim leaders understand that taking better care of your doctors is mandatory for successful organizations in the future.

Physician Wellness - What is the Level of Expertise in Your Organization?

In this post let me show you two important new developments in the prevention of physician burnout.

1) The definition of Five Levels of Expertise in Physician Well-being as proposed by Tait Shanafelt et al in an important new study.

2) A new way for your organization to leap frog to LEVEL FIVE in a single step.

Take a look at the table below and LEAVE A COMMENT telling us the level of your organization's expertise in preventing physician burnout.

Physician Burnout - 7 Ways Your Physician Wellness Committee will Fail

So very few organizations make an effort to address physician burnout proactively … it is an industry wide blind spot. We are all so busy putting out the daily fires of patient care and ceaseless organizational change that doing something for the people in the system never makes it onto your punch list. 

If you do not address workplace stress and physician burnout proactively you are doomed ...

... to receive lower patient satisfaction and quality scores
- higher error rates and malpractice risk
- be forced to deal with disruptive physician behavior
- and higher than normal physician and staff turnover

What if you have a Physician Wellness Committee?

You are not out of the woods by any means. Your organization is one of the 10% who are making an attempt to address physician burnout proactively. You are one of the lucky ones. 

And your Physician Wellness Committee will fail if you don't understand these 7 critical errors I see organizations make over and over again. 

Do not fall into these traps!