What makes a high quality Healthcare Administrator?

Let me show you the Three Commandments a Healthcare Administrator must follow to do a good job. They were buried in a recent online article and we believe they are vitally important principles to every healthcare delivery organization going forward.

These three principles are so simple, so powerful and so often consistently ignored. They apply equally to all physicians leaders.

Let's set the stage 

Let's start with three dynamics governing the relationship between physicians and administrators inside any healthcare delivery organization.

1) All good things flow from the physicians in the system

• ALL income
• ALL quality medical decisions regarding care for the patients
• The very reason the organization exists in the first place ... caring for patients ... is performed and/or coordinated by the orders of physicians

It ALL flows from the doctors.

So it would make sense that a healthcare delivery organization would hire a group of the highest quality physicians and maintain a superb working relationship with them at all times. Yes?

2) Healthcare is a business. We need administrators.

Is this an appropriate response to physician burnout in GP's in the British NHS?

The National Health Service is a classic toxic work environment for GP's - with an administration that is singularly out to lunch.

The NHS could recognize the scope of the problem and the importance of GP health to the quality of the service they provide to the nation ... but no. As physician burnout runs rampant in practices and news headlines across the land ... they double down on blaming the victim.

Now the Doncaster Local Medical Committee (LMC) has installed a web page where GP's can report each other to the authorities for symptoms of burnout

Oh My God ... what a slippery slope.

The Four Causes of Physician Burnout - Video Training

In my work with  hundreds of overstressed and burned out physicians I have discovered four main sources of the stress that causes physician burnout.

Even though we added a fifth cause to the list just recently, these four main sources are the ones you really have to watch out for.

ln the video training below I will show you these four distinct patterns - together they reveal the core causes of the modern physician burnout epidemic.

The world's first Physician Burnout Prevention Mobile APP 

What if you could have all the following at your fingertips 24/7

• Short video trainings on the causes of burnout - so you can fill the hole in your medical education
• Short video trainings on our top 14 burnout prevention tools
• Audios for sitting and walking meditation (3, 5 and 10 minutes long)
• Instant relaxation with guided imagery audios - body scan, magic bubble, the lake, the garden and more
• Handouts for 11 of the training videos that turn them into mini trainings for your entire team

That's exactly what we have packed into our Burnout Proof Mobile APP

Physician Burnout - Avoiding the Frog in the Pot Syndrome

You have heard the "frog in the pot" story ... yes?

• If you drop a frog in boiling water, it jumps out
• If you put a frog in cool water and heat it slowly, pretty soon you have a dead frog in a boiling pot of water

It works the same way for many over stressed physicians.

Here is how you know YOU are a frog in a boiling pot (and three ways to prevent it in the future)

Where can you turn for field-tested tools to prevent physician burnout?

If you search the internet for help, often all you see is "list articles".  

You know the ones. They usually have a title something like, "17 things doctors can do to prevent burnout". Then you look and the tools are things like

• Get more sleep
• Count your blessings
• Don't forget to have more fun
• Volunteer
• Learn something new
  (BTW, these are real examples, some from the AMA website no less)

Now that kind of advice is fine. BUT, they never tell you how to do these things or where to find the time in the first place. As a full time executive coach working with hundreds of physician clients I can tell you this for sure - if these are the only steps you take ... your stress levels and burnout risk won't budge.

Most likely these so-called tools will make things worse because you will blame yourself when nothing changes.

Let's get you some real tools, tested and proven effective in the real world by hundreds of physicians like you. First I have some questions for you ...

Physician Burnout - don't let ICD-10 tip you over the edge

There are plenty of signs that a significant number of physicians are walking on the edge of a cliff at work. If you look at this year's Medscape Physicians Lifestyle Survey, 46% of those 19,000 doctors are already suffering from burnout symptoms. Even more are on the verge.

Will ICD-10 be the tipping point in your practice?

Experts tell me that ICD-10 could mean an hour or more extra work in your day starting October 1st. I am very suspicious you don't have that kind of time just lying around in your practice.

In this post I will show you why I think ICD-10 may be the tipping point for many physicians - and what you can do now to avoid that fate.

Physician Burnout and "Good Stress"

At every live training, I ask the group, "How would you describe the difference between stress and physician burnout?" Someone always musters a really hopeful look and chimes in with ...

"Well, stress can be good sometimes, right?"

The short answer is, "Yes".

Its what they are hoping I will say - as if those three letters will make everything better. As if that answer will make burnout go away, so we don't have to talk about it today. Talking about it would make it impossible to ignore. That is uncomfortable when you finally realize you are walking the cliff edge (see below).

That "Yes" begs another question:

If there is such a thing as "good stress", then what goes wrong when stress gets tipped over into physician burnout?

Let's examine the answer to that question in today's blog post.

• Let me show you a graph that shows the bell shaped curve mapping the relationship between stress and performance
• I will also show you the cliff edge most doctors are walking that explains the high prevalence of physician burnout
• And why you always have to be on the lookout for your last straw

Stress and Performance

Physician Burnout - 7 Ways Your Physician Wellness Committee will Fail

So very few organizations make an effort to address physician burnout proactively … it is an industry wide blind spot. We are all so busy putting out the daily fires of patient care and ceaseless organizational change that doing something for the people in the system never makes it onto your punch list. 

If you do not address workplace stress and physician burnout proactively you are doomed ...

... to receive lower patient satisfaction and quality scores
- higher error rates and malpractice risk
- be forced to deal with disruptive physician behavior
- and higher than normal physician and staff turnover

What if you have a Physician Wellness Committee?

You are not out of the woods by any means. Your organization is one of the 10% who are making an attempt to address physician burnout proactively. You are one of the lucky ones. 

And your Physician Wellness Committee will fail if you don't understand these 7 critical errors I see organizations make over and over again. 

Do not fall into these traps!

A Gratitude Journal is a powerful weapon in the fight against Physician Burnout

A large body of research shows a weekly Gratitude Journal is a simple way to help anyone - even physicians - be healthier and happier. It is an antidote to our constant focus on disease, problems and the frustrations of modern medical practice.

In this article I will share the research evidence for the effectiveness of gratitude, including a gratitude bibliography, and show you five keys to a maximally effective Gratitude Journal. Hint: there is a dose response curve. If you over do it, even gratitude loses effectiveness.

Perhaps the biggest danger of never counting your blessings I have noticed is this ... 

Without a regular practice of gratitude, you are at high risk for falling into "Eeyore Mode".