Editorial

GUEST EDITOR:

Steven B. Bird, MD, FACEP, FACMT

Burnout in healthcare workers, high turnover in the professionals, and the tremendous uptick in unfilled positions have become pervasive concerns in the last two years. The demanding nature of healthcare work, coupled with systemic challenges, has led to a rising tide of physical, emotional, and psychological exhaustion. This issue examines the factors contributing to healthcare burnout and turnover, explores the consequences for both medical professionals and patient care, and offers some hope and solutions through innovative solutions and initiatives.

Healthcare professionals experience burnout due to a myriad of reasons, including heavy workloads, long hours, bureaucratic burdens, and limited control over their practices. The relentless pressure to provide high-quality care in an increasingly complex healthcare landscape often leaves medical professionals feeling overwhelmed and undervalued. The lack of work-life balance, moral distress, and the emotional toll of dealing with suffering and loss further contribute to burnout. While all of these stressors were present before the COVID-19 pandemic, the tremendous disruptions to all aspects of society accelerated the rate of burnout, turnover, and people leaving the healthcare professions.

Burnout has immense consequences for our healthcare system and society as a whole. Decreased job satisfaction, reduced productivity (that is, more people working part-time), worse patient outcomes, and increased healthcare costs, just to name a few. Increased turnover exacerbates the already acutely-felt shortage of healthcare providers and also contributes to increased costs (think traveling nurses and locum tenens physicians).

In this issue’s essays, a number of technological and support system improvements offer some hopeful solutions to our front-line clinicians. The ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate a chart in real-time, with minimal input from the clinician, has the potential to legitimately revolutionize how we document. Early testing of this system at UMassMemorial Health has shown the AI program to be liked by both clinicians and patients, with a significant reduction in documentation time and time spent in the electronic health record. AI also doesn’t miss a day of work or get fatigued throughout the day. Whether the return on investment is great enough to allow widespread adoption of the technology has yet to be determined. But I am hopeful.

Articles written by Drs. Amy Harrington and Mark Albanese also describe what sort of behavioral health solutions exist here in Massachusetts, and how Physician Health Services can help you, or your colleagues, who are in need. The pandemic pulled the curtain back on the broken behavioral health system in the U.S. Our patients must wait far too long to access outpatient or inpatient behavioral health services. But it’s not just our patients. Even savvy physicians have difficulty accessing behavioral health. Dr. Harrington’s essay provides some concrete ways to lessen the burden for accessing this important care.

Fortunately, it appears that the trends in physician and other healthcare worker turnover has reversed course to some degree. However, recent financial stressors on healthcare organizations are putting new strains on our fragile healthcare system, threatening (again) the well-being of the workforce.

Despite these challenges, I remain hopeful. By addressing the underlying drivers of burnout and turnover and by leveraging technological advancements, we can create a more robust and resilient healthcare system that values and safeguards the well-being of its workforce. By maintaining a steadfast commitment to positive change, we can foster a future where healthcare professionals thrive, patients receive timely and optimal care, and hope and genuine caring remain the driving force in our pursuit of a healthier society.

Steven B. Bird, MD, FACEP, FACMT Clinician Experience Officer (CXO) Professor of Emergency Medicine University of Massachusetts Medical School