As you know, burnout is at an all-time high. I wanted to ask you, what are you doing to help your colleagues and coworkers address this issue? Are you even aware of what you, specifically, can do for them? Do you feel as if there’s nothing that you as an individual can do?
Let’s start by talking about what works. We know that 80% of what causes burnout is organizational. A huge organizational and cultural change isn’t going to occur overnight. However, there are some mindset, and resilience things, you can bring into your organization. You don’t have to be a member of the C-suite, or on the MEC, or considered a physician leader. You don’t even have to be a physician. Remember anyone can lead, from any position.
Here are some of the things that work: meditation, yoga, Qigong, exercise, and healthy eating. What if you were to organize groups at your workplace and they participated in these things over the lunch hour? What if you found people within your organization who would volunteer to teach these groups? Would that not make the entire group healthier and more resilient to burnout? Would you not be doing your entire community a favor? Would this not, in a sense, make you a leader within your work community? Could you not find ways to do this on a shoestring budget? I’m sure that, if you put your mind to it, you could find away. You could work out the necessary details with letters of release or permission slips or whatever was needed. You could find timeslots that would cover a two hour lunch break with rotating leaders. (two hours to accommodate everyone who might be interested). You can ask people to volunteer their time to lead these groups.
This is not a pipe dream. This is colleagues helping one another. We cannot battle burnout one physician at a time, or one healthcare worker at a time. We can only do this by helping each other and working together. If this suggestion doesn’t fit, find one that does.
For those of you who are interested, I will be giving a talk on how I use personality science to battle burnout within healthcare. This is titled One World One Language. The link, with all the details, below. I hope to see you there.
