The Public Health Problem Of Burnout In Health Professionals

Patient-centered, high-quality health care relies on the well-being, health, and safety of health care clinicians. However, alarmingly high rates of clinician burnout in the United States are detrimental to the quality of care being provided, harmful to individuals in the workforce, and costly. It is important to take a systemic approach to address burnout that focuses on the structure, organization, and culture of health care. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being builds upon two groundbreaking reports from the past twenty years, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, which both called attention to the issues around patient safety and quality of care. This report explores the extent, consequences, and contributing factors of clinician burnout and provides a framework for a systems approach to clinician burnout and professional well-being, a research agenda to advance clinician well-being, and recommendations for the field.

Professional burnout is an epidemic in America. Approximately half of physicians and nurses are affected and at risk for themselves and their patients. Much has been written about professional burnout. The term was originally coined in the 1970s by American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals experienced by people working in "helping" professions. Since then, many books have been written to address this looming national public health crisis. But, unfortunately, there has been much less written from a solution standpoint: getting to the root cause of why this is occurring now more than ever. The Resilient Healthcare Organization engages readers focusing on physicians and healthcare professionals and their experiences and how they overcame a loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. The feelings of emotional exhaustion are characterized by depersonalization and perceived ineffectiveness. These are the cardinal features that define "burnout" and affect almost 50% of physicians and 30–70% of nurses. This book addresses why burnout is viewed as a threat and how it can be fought. The author discusses the contributing factors and solutions at the health system and societal level. Additionally, this book explores the current and future etiology and impacts on physicians and healthcare professionals, with a significant emphasis on solutions at both the individual level and the system level. Contributors: Patricia S. Normand MD, Bruce Flareau, MD, Kathleen Ferket, MSN, APRN, Daniel Edelman, DO, and Peter B. Angood, MD.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

" This is the first research-based book to confront workplace issues facing nurses who have disabilities. It not only examines in depth their experiences, roadblocks to successful employment, and misperceptions surrounding them, but also provides viable solutions for creating positive attitudes towards them and a welcoming work environment that fosters hiring and retention. From the perspectives and actual voices of nurses with disabilities, nurse leaders, nurse administrators, and patients, the book identifies nurses with disabilities (including sensory, musculoskeletal, emotional, and mental health issues), discusses why they choose to leave nursing or hide their disabilities, and analyzes how their disabilities may influence career choices. "

The purpose of this book is to summarise the state of the science in the study of stress and burnout among health care professionals. Moreover, this book seeks to set the agenda for future research in the areas of stress and burnout. Despite the popularity of these topics as subjects for empirical study, particularly among health professionals, there has been no attempt to build a comprehensive summary of the literature concerning stress and burnout in health care. This book fills the void by bringing together leaders in the academic study of stress and burnout and by summarising the research on the measurement of stress and burnout, the unique causes of this condition for health care professionals as well as the consequences of stress and burnout and the patients they serve. It covers evidence-based mechanisms for the prevention and reduction of stress and burnout. Each chapter provides a synthesis of the critical stress and burnout literature as well as ideas for what research is needed to fill current voids in the literature. Final chapter of the book provides a research agenda to promote research concerning this phenomenon in health professions.

Physicians and other helping professionals have created a practical, hands-on book that will aid in the identification and reduction of job stress. Nurses, physicians, thanatologists, and psychotherapists are among the growing number of health care professionals whose physical and mental health are being severely affected by work stress. This unique volume achieves what no earlier book has attempted for this specialized professional group. It offers a thorough understanding of professional burnout, elaborating how burnout develops and offering a model with which to identify job stressors. Professional Burnout in Medicine and the Helping Professions also offers an in-depth exploration of stress and burnout issues from the perspectives of specific medical and helping profession disciplines--physicians, nurses, social workers, psychotherapists, teachers, consultants, agency and hospital workers, funeral directors, and more. Experts in these fields examine the values, ethics, and morality of individuals, health care organizations, and society that may lead to burnout This in-depth and highly practical volume identifies the stages of disillusionment and offers successful intervention strategies for recognizing the signs and reducing or efficiently managing causative factors.