Healthcare workers will be the ones to bear the brunt of the long-term physical and mental effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and there needs to be a comprehensive strategy to protect their well-being during and after the pandemic, three physicians wrote in a perspective piece published by The New England Journal of Medicine.
Victor J. Dzau, MD, Darrell Kirch, MD, and Thomas Nasca, MD, from the National Academy of Medicine's Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience, wrote the article.
They suggested five organizational and national strategies to protect clinician well-being:
1. Integrate the work of chief wellness officers or clinician well-being programs into organizational decision-making bodies during the crisis.
2. Establish anonymous reporting mechanisms that allow clinicians to advocate for themselves and their patients without fear of retribution.
3. Work to maintain and grow existing well-being programs.
4. Provide federal funding to care for clinicians who experience physical and mental health struggles post-pandemic.
5. Allocate federal funding to set up a national tracking program to measure clinician well-being and track the outcomes of interventions to improve well-being.