Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/717576
76 Executive Briefing The crazy thing is I always thought I wasn't the dad or the hus- band I wanted to be, but that I was the doctor I wanted to be. After the lawsuit, it was like, wow. I'm not even that. I had to take unflinching ownership and come to terms with my experiences. Especially in emergency medicine, you see emotion- al crises every day. You think they go right through you and have no effect, but they really go through you like radiation. You're not aware of it, but you start finding out you have physical problems and it's the radiation — it's been doing damage all along. JT: I went through burnout as an executive climbing the cor- porate ladder too quickly for my own good, but I didn't know it then. For me, making a contribution to society used to mean doing good work, being available and driving significant out- puts in professional arenas. Now making a contribution means doing good work in the community, being a better father and a better husband. It's a reprioritization. With physicians, we are trying to get them to a place where they can say, 'I'm dealing with some stuff and I need help.' There are a number of things you can do to create this culture. One of the things we offer is an enhanced employee assistance program— LiveWell WorkLife Services. This program offers unlimited tele- phonic consultation, support and educational resources, pro- viding our clinical and non-clinical teams with 24/7/365 access to speak one-on-one with a TeamHealth-specific, master's-level counselor. If personal therapy sessions are needed, our associ- ates and their spouses or children can attend up to three in-per- son therapy sessions per year per issue, and it's 100 percent covered if referred through our program. The program also in- cludes concierge services to help with time management. If a physician needs to order flowers, make dinner reservations, do dry cleaning or call a handyman, we provide that. We also help physicians find assisted living for elderly parents and manage emotions around that too. We also have a number of internal processes to allow dialogues to become more open, natural and frequent. We've taught mul- tiple courses on burnout and burnout prevention during our National Medical Leadership Conferences and in other leader- ship training sessions. Just as physicians round on patients, our facility medical directors round on clinicians. Physicians have performance reviews, which is fairly unique in the healthcare in- dustry. The reviews are behavioral, not clinical. This has helped open those lines. Q: What should leaders do when they suspect a provider is burned out? RF: There needs to be recognition that [burnout is] real. We need to remove the stigma associated with talking about it and getting help. Physicians have to admit they have a problem when the signs come. The treatment is much more effective early on. JT: They should confront physicians appropriately, with coach- ing prior to that discussion. Leaders need to tell physicians con- vincingly — and back it up with facts —they do not have to lose their jobs. We had a couple of situations where we found out through drug screening that someone had a problem. We have been able, with physician participation, to get them back to work with credentials and full privileges at the facility they used to work at. They may have to write prescriptions under supervi- sion, but they are back working and their career is not lost. Q: What can physicians and other leaders do today to ad- dress burnout? JT: First, recognize burnout is an issue. It is not a sign of weak- ness to ask for help. RF: First, physicians can do an honest self assessment. Then, become sensitive to this in your partners. How can it be that we as physicians are so sensitive we can smell a GI bleed from the doorway, or the whiff of ketones on someone's breath, but we can't recognize burnout in someone we work with for 12 hours a day? We aren't sensitive to it. Physicians want to take a test, in- tervene and fix the problem. This is not one of those things. You can't vacation your way out of it. Talking about it and owning the problem will fix it. If we don't start taking care of ourselves, our patients are going to suffer. n "Physicians want to take a test, intervene and fix the problem. [Burnout] is not one of those things. You can't vacation your way out of it. Talking about it and owning the problem will fix it. If we don't start taking care of ourselves, our patients are going to suffer." — Dr. Robert Frantz, President of TeamHealth Emergency Medicine West At TeamHealth, our purpose is to perfect our physicians' ability to practice medicine, every day, in everything we do. Through our more than 16,000 affiliated physicians and advanced practice clinicians, TeamHealth offers outsourced emergency medicine, hospital medicine, anesthesia, orthopaedic hospitalist, acute care surgery, obstetrics and gynecology hospitalist, urgent care, post-acute care and medical call center solutions to approximately 3,400 civilian and military hospitals, clinics, physician groups and post-acute care facilities nationwide. Our philosophy is as simple as our goal is singular: we believe better experiences for physicians lead to better outcomes—for patients, partners and physicians alike. Learn more at http://www.teamhealth.com.