How COVID-19 has affected career planning, job satisfaction, and mental health.
CHG Healthcare recently conducted a healthcare career satisfaction survey of more than 1,200 physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and registered nurses to find out how COVID-19 has affected their career planning, job satisfaction, and mental health.
The results of the survey offer healthcare organizations a valuable look at the impacts of the pandemic on providers’ overall well-being and provide insights into how organizations can address burnout, improve retention, and refine their recruitment strategies.
The toll of burnout
Pre-COVID-19, 80% of providers indicated they were experiencing some degree of burnout; since the pandemic, 64% said their burnout has gotten worse. The impact of the pandemic was felt more acutely by physicians working on the frontlines (75%) and in emergency medicine (72%). NPs and PAs in OB/GYN (75%) and nurses in frontline roles (77%) and emergency medicine (83%) were similarly impacted.
Dr. Rita Manfredi, associate clinical professor for the Department of Emergency Medicine at George Washington School of Medicine, says she’s spoken with physicians who have even been considering retirement because of COVID. “COVID is going to reduce our workforce; I think it already has.”
Focus on wellness
Dr. Manfredi is co-author of Being Well in Emergency Medicine, ACEP’s Guide to Investing in Yourself, and her work focuses on how healthcare organizations impact the wellness of the individual healthcare provider. She feels organizations need to be more proactive and says one possible remedy to burnout is increasing staffing levels so providers have lighter schedules. “We need time to process this grief, helplessness, and rage we’re all feeling. And ideally leadership can do this without pay cuts.”
Dr. Manfredi also recommends expanding wellness and employee assistance programs. “A lot of these solutions should be coming from leadership. Leaders have to be compassionate — maybe even take 30 minutes to see what it’s like in our shoes — listen to us. There’s lots of research that has found that what determines your well-being is what the organization does.”
Dr. Manfredi asserts that healthcare leaders should look at burnout as a business problem and determine how much it’s costing — both financially and in terms of medical errors. But it should also be looked at morally and ethically.
“If you have a good wellness program you increase patient safety, you increase family satisfaction,” Dr. Manfredi says. “All the metrics executives are interested in could be improved if they paid attention to wellness more.”
“What works for me personally is time away,” she says. “This means decreasing my hours at work. That has benefited my attitude and longevity in my career.”
To read the entire article: https://comphealth.com/resources/healthcare-career-satisfaction/