b'SELF CARE GUIDE|overwhelmed and overworked, he says, urg- about more time sitting in the waiting area ing hospital leaders to regularly communicateand less time with their clinician. There are this type of message to their staffs.often too few exam rooms and support staff You can remind them that, in order to stayto manage the workflow efficiently.professional and effective, [they] need to alsoFinding ways to handle these stressors will stay well-rested.require enhanced resilience. The trouble, says Greg Hammer, MD, a professor at StanfordHammer, is that resilience in medicine has University Medical Center, echoes the ideatraditionally been defined as our ability to that open communication with facility leader- work long hours, including all night and the ship is vital to the quest for work/life balance. following day, while continuing to deliver The alternative, he says, is continuedexcellent patient care.increase in the incidence of burnout, with itsThis definition has to expand to include incumbent decrement in the quality of carehealthcare providers wellness, he says. and growing rates of costly turnover and evenIf we are not healthy emotionally, spir-physician suicide.itually and physically, we cannot practice The numbers bear out the notion that a fail-Work/life balancehigh-quality medicine. Our lives outside of ure to address burnout and work/life balancework will certainly suffer as well. has serious repercussions for the healthcarehas long been an issueTo strike a blow for work/life balance, industry.for American workers,Fitch urges healthcare workers to spend According to the 2019 National Healthsome of that time away from work having Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, forand those in theconversations with both peers and facil-example, hospital turnover reached its highestity leaders about rest and non-work-related rate in a decade in 2018. At 19.1 percent, thathealthcare professionactivities. number represented an increase of almost oneTalk about how this time off benefits percentage point from the year before, andare no different. the company, he says. [Fitch and Frenzel] outpaced the national average of 15 percentbelieve its leaderships responsibility to cre-across all other industries.ate the culture and policies that respect each And its true that medical professionalsWe spend more on healthcare than anyteam members need for rest and recharg-have long been considered among the mostother first-world country, he continues, anding from the emotional labor of caregiving. at-risk for suicide among all occupations, withincreases in costs associated with hiring moreHow can you take care of others if you are estimates as far back as the 1970s put the ratepersonnel in order to reduce work hours is notnot taking care of yourself?nof physician suicides in the U.S. at nearly onecurrently feasible.per day.There are other non-financial factors atREFERENCESwork, such as electronic medical records, andWorld Economic Forum. 2019. Accessed A NEW DEFINITION OF WELLNESS inadequate clinic space and support person- 4/8/2020Bringing these numbers down means shed- nel, adds Hammer.[https://www.weforum.org/ding an admittedly tough-to-break mind- The EMR is a double-edged sword, heagenda/2019/10/countries-work-play-life-set, says Hammer, who is also author of Gainsays. Its benefits include improved billing,balance-stress-netherlands/]Without Pain: The Happiness Handbook forsupply and pharmacy inventory, and data cap- Schwartz S, Adair K, et al. Work-life bal-Health Care Professionals. ture for quality improvement. ance behaviours cluster in work settings Long-standing tradition in the medicalThat said, EMRs also represent an increaseand relate to burnout and safety culture: arena includes working long hours caring forin time spent charting, which leaves doc- a cross-sectional survey analysis. BMJ our patients at the expense of our family time,tors and nurses spending more time look- Quality & Safety. Volume 28, Issue 2. sleep, exercise, and nutrition. We are traineding at computer screens than seeing patients[https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/to accept these conditions without question face-to-face.content/28/2/142]patient care prevails over self-care. For doctors, charting is often done at theMedscape. 2018. Accessed 4/8/2020. Hammer notes that some facilities haveend of the day in the office or at home in the[https://emedicine.medscape.com/taken steps toward balancing the scalesevening, detracting from time spent witharticle/806779-overview#a1]between work and life, such as limiting hoursfamily and friends, says Hammer.Hospitalrecruiting.com. 2019. Accessed for trainees, for example. But he cautions thatThe directive to see more patients per4/9/2020[https://www.hospitalrecruit-more substantial cultural shifts are con- day is at odds with the increased emphasising.com/blog/5729/hospital-turnover-in-strained by economic considerations. on patient satisfaction. Patients are unhappy2018-the-trend-continues/]20 SELF CARE GUIDE|2020| www.elitecme.com'