Abstract
[This is an excerpt.] There is a high prevalence of burnout, depression, and suicide among health care professionals (HCPs). Compromised well-being among HCPs is associated with medical errors, medical malpractice suits, health care associated infections, patient mortality, lower interpersonal teamwork, lower patient satisfaction, job dissatisfaction, reduction in professional effort, and turnover of staff. In addition, burnout among physicians is an independent predictor of suicidal ideation and substance abuse and dependence. As burnout is adversely affecting quality, safety, and health care system performance, as well as the personal lives of HCPs, there is a need for organizations to add measures of HCP well-being to their routine institutional performance measures (e.g., patient volume, quality metrics, patient satisfaction, financial performance). Institutional performance measures, including measurements of HCP well-being, hold the potential to substantially improve health care systems. However, putting measures in place without sufficient thought and care (e.g., insufficiently valid data) may result in the misdirection of resources, a false sense of the scope of the problem, and delay in improvement. [To read more, click View Resource.]
This resource is found in our Actionable Strategies for Health Organizations: Measurement & Accountability.
