Becker's Hospital Review

46 Executive Briefing Sponsored by: E mployee burnout rates in the healthcare sector were exceptionally high even before COVID-19. Burnout has a significant adverse influence on clinicians' overall well-being, as well as their sense of job fulfillment, which results in higher employee turnover rates, lower- quality patient care and decreased patient satisfaction. Over the past year, clinician wellness has taken on greater urgency as the pandemic has exacerbated burnout and mental health issues among healthcare providers nationwide. Becker's Hospital Review spoke with two experts who are tackling these challenges head on: • Stephanie N. Sudikoff, MD, ACC, executive director of simulation, SYN:APSE Center for Learning, Transformation, and Innovation, Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health • Sharon Sloane, Co-Founder and CEO, WILL Interactive Dr. Sudikoff and Ms. Sloane discussed how leading healthcare organizations can help support clinician well- being through comprehensive programs and innovative training technologies. Holistic well-being programs must address the workplace environment "Emotional well-being among healthcare providers is a serious problem," Dr. Sudikoff said. "In addition to burnout, physician suicide rates are much higher than the general public and they continue to increase." The New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the crisis in a recent essay called "My Intern." The author recounts how one of his interns committed suicide and it has taken him six years to process the trauma and talk about it. In response to mounting concern about clinician wellness, Yale New Haven Health has developed a portfolio of proactive measures. The organization has an excellent family resource program that focuses on individuals and includes many components like counseling options, mindfulness and meditation exercises, health coaching and lots of other useful programs. "While all of those things are incredibly important, if you aren't also addressing the general workplace environment that's causing some of the issues, you won't succeed," Dr. Sudikoff said. "A comprehensive well-being program needs to be multifaceted and very holistic." To examine specific concerns raised in survey feedback, Yale New Haven Health formed committees with physicians and other relevant staff members. One group focused on the usability of the EMR and how many clicks were required to complete tasks. Other groups looked at improving process efficiency to make clinician workflows smoother and easier. For example, the organization has implemented virtual scribes for interested clinicians to decrease the amount of time that they spend on documentation. "By talking about these issues with the people who can fix them, we've made great strides," Dr. Sudikoff said. "But no one measure alone will change the culture and create a true sense of community. We felt we needed something else, which is where The Thriving Clinician project has come into play." Innovative learning systems designed to create a better workplace environment for clinicians Yale New Haven Health and WILL Interactive had collaborated in the past on Common Ground Healthcare, a program designed to prevent sexual harassment and abusive conduct. "The idea for The Thriving Clinician program arose during a dinner between our leadership team and WILL Interactive," Dr. Sudikoff said. "We already had a successful working relationship and knew that the WILL Interactive team had worked with the military on suicide prevention." WILL Interactive describes its approach to behavior change as "Training 2.0." The company's Choose Your Own Journey™ methodology is built on four key pillars of positive behavior change. It leverages the neuroscience of learning, which explores how humans learn and make decisions. WILL Interactive also incorporates the power of story to engage people in memorable conversations, the appeal of video and the interactivity of gaming. Tackling clinician wellness: How Yale New Haven Health and WILL Interactive are working to support clinicians "[Clinicians] become highly immersed in the stories because they are based on actual events." Sharon Sloane, Co-Founder and CEO, WILL Interactive Continued on next page

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