By combining advanced technologies and improving workplace culture, healthcare systems can optimize their workforce and help reduce the burnout that's plaguing many healthcare professions.
This was a major theme in a roundtable discussion at Becker's 14th Annual Meeting, led by Patrick Runnels, MD, chief medical officer of population health, University Hospitals (Cleveland).
Roundtable participants shared examples of technologies as well as successful partnerships that are helping retain and recruit their current workforce and prepare future workers.
Four key takeaways were:
1.) Burnout rates in healthcare have increased, leading to worker dissatisfaction and workforce shortages. According to Dr. Runnels, burnout rates are at 50% or more for nurses, and many healthcare professionals across the board are feeling burned out. "We've had a longstanding problem with burnout in healthcare that has permeated a lot of fields for a long time," he said. "We know a lot of folks are frustrated and overwhelmed."
2.) Technology can be a valuable tool in improving efficiency and reducing administrative
burden. University Hospitals is experimenting with many new technologies. "One thing we've looked at is what we can do with remote nursing," Dr. Runnels said. "We're using a highly complex set of visual equipment in patients' hospital rooms that allows nurses to observe what's going on with a lot of granularity – and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities can send notifications when certain movements happen. This is a potential solution that will help us figure out how to allow people to have a better quality of life, possibly providing opportunities to do some nursing shifts from home."
"If we use AI and other types of technologies successfully, we can take away those things that are highly manual, cumbersome and operationally intrusive so employees can focus on higher value activities and what they really want to do," a roundtable participant said.
3.) Creating a positive and supportive culture is essential for employee engagement and retention. One roundtable participant shared how a Florida hospital changed a negative culture. "Our new leaders were willing to jump in and do things [to change the culture]," he said. "If someone didn't want to do something, our leaders would show them and do it with them. We needed to create a culture where people want to come to work, where they want to show up, they want to have a good time."
4.) Partnerships with community colleges can help reduce ongoing turnover. Another participant shared how her organization partnered with local community colleges. The partnership turned a nine-month course into a nine-week course with in-person clinical practice. "Students are learning more of the job, which increases our workforce," she said. "We need to keep that funnel feeding people into our organization."
"Partnerships have to be at the core [of addressing workforce shortages]," a participant summarized.
Collaborative partnerships and innovative technologies that help burned-out staff do more with less, improve their overall quality of life and create a more positive culture can help attract and retain healthcare professionals today and for the future.