Reducing Health Care Burnout: Preventive Tips for Organizations & Caregivers

Working in the healthcare industry can be both gratifying and challenging. The unrelenting chronic stress of being exposed to life and death issues, long hours and loads of work can progressively evolve into burnout. If fact, the odds are pretty high that burnout will affect every healthcare professional at some point in their career.

Health Care Burnout

Burnout is defined as the consequence of mental and physical exhaustion that is caused by stress resulting in depersonalization and a profound decrease in personal accomplishment.1 Working in this high-stress industry can become emotionally draining, especially when hospitals are understaffed; the caregiver can begin to experience emotional exhaustion, and fatigue. All of this can lead caregivers to an emotional detachment from their work and to begin to see patients as objects, thereby reducing the safety and quality of care provided.

According to a study by NSI Nursing Solutions, the average national turnover rate among all hospital healthcare workers is 16.5%. And the costs are high:

  • Each additional percentage point increase in turnover can cost the average hospital another $359,650
  • It takes hospitals between 36 to 97 days to hire a replacement for an experienced RN
  • The average cost of turnover for a bedside RN ranges between $44,380 and $63,4002

To prevent burnout, employers should create a culture that sustains resilience and supports employee wellbeing. It’s important to take the time to identify the signs and symptoms of burnout, some of which may include:

  • Chronic emotional and physical fatigue
  • Reduced feelings of sympathy or empathy
  • Poor work-life balance
  • Depersonalization
  • Hypersensitivity or complete insensitivity to emotional material
  • Withdrawal from friends, family, and other loved ones
  • Loss of interest in activities previously enjoyed
  • Feeling blue, irritable, hopeless, and helpless
  • Changes in sleep patterns
  • Getting sick more often
  • Irritability3,4

How Organizations Can Prevent Burnout

As a healthcare employer, there are things your organization can do to help your providers stay healthy and succeed:

  • Take an active role: Know your employees’ concerns – Provide a forum for feedback and address problems before they get to a unrecoverable level.
  • Encourage breaks: Taking breaks helps employees walk away from stress ensuring that the staff is not overworking themselves to the point of burnout.
  • Support healthy habits: Implementing health and wellness programs can be invaluable and they don’t have to cost a lot money to be effective. Include healthy recipes in your newsletters, sponsor workout classes, create a relaxation room, or offer meditation classes.5

How Caregivers Can Prevent Burnout

As a caregiver, adopting healthy behaviors can prevent compassion fatigue and burnout:

Take Time to Care for Yourself

Practicing good self-care will significantly help your resilience and reduce your vulnerability to stress.

  • Balanced, healthy diet
  • Regular exercise
  • Routine schedule of restful sleep
  • Balance between work and personal life
  • Drink alcohol in moderation

Adopt Positive Coping Strategies

Positive coping strategies can be used at work or at home to help ease your response to stressful situations.

  • Deep breathing
  • Meditation
  • Taking a walk
  • Talking with a friend
  • Relaxing in a hot bath

If you still feel that you are not getting enough out of mindful techniques, and are still feeling emotionally vulnerable, chronically stressed and overwhelmed, seek help. Seeing a therapist can help you process your feelings and put things in better perspective, which can help you successfully implement the strategic techniques that will help you move toward a healthy work-life balance.6

References

  1. https://psychcentral.com/lib/identifying-and-reducing-burnout-among-healthcare-professionals/
  2. https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/sk-employee-retention-strategies-for-healthcare
  3. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/caregiving-recognizing-burnout
  4. https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/the-cost-of-caring-10-ways-to-prevent-compassion-fatigue-0209167
  5. http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/7-tips-preventing-staff-burnout-healthcare
  6. https://wire.ama-assn.org/ama-news/burnout-busters-how-boost-satisfaction-personal-life-practice

Financial Fitness: Essential to Your Employees’ Wellbeing

About half of Americans believe they are unprepared for a sudden financial need such as the purchase of a new car, appliance or furniture or a significant home repair, according to Gallup Daily tracking survey through 2015.1

So how can we get financially fit?

How do we find balance between spending and saving – between living in the present and saving for life’s unexpected financial needs? And why is this important? First let’s define financial wellbeing – it is defined as a state of being wherein you:2

  • Have control over day-to-day, month-to-month finances;
  • Have the capacity to absorb a financial shock;
  • Are on track to meet your financial goals; and
  • Have the financial freedom to make the choices that allow you to enjoy life.

Organizations that don’t implement financial wellbeing into their wellness programs are missing the  mark. In a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, money is a somewhat or significant source of stress for 64% of Americans but especially for parents of children below the age of 18 and younger adults (77% of parents, 75% of millennials, ages 18 to 35, and 76% of Gen Xers, ages 36 to 49).3

The added financial stress has a significant impact on many Americans’ lives. Some are putting their health care needs on hold because of financial concerns.

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans say that they have either considered skipping (9 percent) or skipped (12 percent) going to a doctor when they needed health care because of financial concerns.3

Many adults are coping with health and lifestyle challenges and are beginning to recognize the connection between stress and physical and mental health.

  • Money and work remain the top two sources of very/somewhat significant stress, but in 2015, for the first time, family responsibilities emerged as the third most common stressor (54 percent).
  • The majority of adults report having at least one chronic illness (67 percent). In addition, many adults lack exercise and remain sedentary for much of the day. More than 10 percent of adults also report having a mental health-related diagnosis (13 percent for anxiety disorder and 16 percent for depression).
  • About two in five adults (39 percent) report overeating or eating unhealthy foods in the past month due to stress, compared to 33 percent in 2014.
  • Adults in urban areas have a significantly higher reported stress level on average than those in suburban and rural settings (urban: 5.6 on a 10-point scale, vs. 5.0 for suburban and 4.7 for rural).
  • Almost one-third of adults report that stress has a very strong or strong impact on their body/physical health and mental health (31 and 32 percent in 2015, compared to 25 and 28 percent in 2014, respectively).4

To help employees improve their financial fitness, organizations should provide financial education, programs, and other content into their wellness programs.

6 Ways Employees Can Improve Their Financial Wellbeing

  1. Make a simple plan to monitor and track your spending habits and to gain control over your financial decision making.
  2. Have a budget and stick to it. Set short-term and long-term goals to provide structure for your financial decision making. For example, set a spending budget for the holidays. More stuff doesn’t mean less stress.
  3. Spend some time researching before making major financial decisions to ensure you make the most-informed financial decisions.
  4. Get smart about money – Use free educational resources available at http://www.consumerfinance.gov.
  5. Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to your own standards. Don’t purchase things to keep up with the Joneses. Instead think about long-term impacts of every purchase.
  6. Avoid impulse shopping. Keep your spending under control by stopping to think about whether you need that purchase or postpone the purchase to a later date if you can.

References

  1. Gallup, Inc. “Half of Americans Unprepared for Sudden Financial Need.” http://www.gallup.com/poll/188009/half-americans-unprepared-sudden-financial-need.aspx?g_source=FINANCIAL_WELLBEING&g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles
  2. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “Financial well-being: The goal of financial education.” January 2015: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201501_cfpb_report_financial-well-being.pdf
  3. American Psychological Association. “Money Stress Weighs on Americans’ Health” 2015, Vol. 46, No.4 http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/04/money-stress.aspx
  4. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2015/highlights.aspx