Rutgers Health gathers more than 120 leaders from 18-plus organizations to address provider burnout using evidence-based strategies
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
<p>To address this issue, the inaugural
How do workforce well-being initiatives affect patient care outcomes, health care costs and overall system performance?
Decades of research has shown that when health care organizations invest in workforce well-being, system performance improves and we achieve better patient outcomes. Clinicians are more engaged, make fewer medical errors and organizations report lower litigation costs. In turn, this leads to lower overall health care costs.
Patients also feel the difference: Patient satisfaction scores are higher in facilities that prioritize clinician organization is critical. At Rutgers Health, we belong to the Professional Well-Being Academic Consortium. We not only survey our own organization, but we also benchmark nationally against other programs and specialties. This allows us to idea-share on what programs have data behind them and what is working.
Using this data guides our strategy. For example, when our surveys identified poor sleep as a key concern last year, our team led a successful Sleep Week program. We’re building on that foundation this year with a more robust strategy, featuring a keynote speaker secured from NASA. The idea is to allow the survey data to directly inform the initiatives that are most important to our people.
We are also committed to integrating wellness into the curriculum as a core component of our educational approach. We are strategizing about how best to embed wellbeing into curriculum design and support. We also use smart curriculum design to minimize unnecessary stress, such as optimizing the timing of tests and assessments.
Ultimately, academic institutions achieve this goal by fostering a supportive culture. We encourage simple, everyday connections. An example of this is simply offering kindness, for example, by smiling at a colleague or asking, “How was your weekend?” That is what ultimately helps us build a more durable, supportive and connected community.
