Burnout is a critical issue in healthcare today, impacting both individuals and entire organizations. Yet too often, the responsibility for preventing burnout is placed solely on the individuals experiencing it—those already stretched thin. While individual strategies are important, real change requires a multi-faceted approach that involves the whole team and leadership, addressing both personal well-being and organizational culture.
In a recent webinar, Mitigating Burnout: Tools for Yourself and Your Team, delivered to an audience of 1,500 healthcare professionals in collaboration with MedBridge I focused on actionable strategies to support individual stress management and team resilience. However, this is just part of the solution. To truly address burnout, leaders and systems must also be actively involved in reshaping the environments where burnout occurs.
The leadership and system-level changes necessary to support these strategies were not covered in this workshop, but they are critical. Leadership must be engaged to shift workplace cultures in a way that makes these stress management and resilience strategies sustainable and effective.
Why Addressing Burnout Needs to Go Beyond the Individual
Burnout is not just an individual problem—it’s a systemic one that ripples through the entire organization, affecting patient care, clinician retention, and organizational performance. Research shows:
- Medical errors: Burnout doubles the likelihood of reporting medical errors (Shin, 2022).
- Physical and mental health risks: Chronic stress is tied to long-term health problems for clinicians (Burri et al., 2022).
- Turnover: Burnout accelerates turnover, worsening staffing shortages (Mazerolle et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2023).
These findings make it clear that burnout needs to be addressed on multiple fronts. While individual and team-based strategies are essential, without system-wide changes, the efforts of individuals will not be enough.
What You Can Do Right Now
If you’re ready to take actionable steps to tackle burnout in your organization, I encourage you to explore the two webinars available on MedBridge. Both offer valuable strategies:
1. Mitigating Burnout: Tools for Yourself and Your Team —A practical guide focused on stress management for individuals and resilience-building for teams. This session offers immediate takeaways for healthcare professionals to apply in their daily practice.
2. Mitigating Burnout: Introduction to a Coach Approach in Healthcare —This webinar explores how coaching techniques can strengthen team dynamics and reduce burnout across healthcare settings.
If you’re a MedBridge member, viewing these webinars can provide an introduction to these important tools. Additionally, a short clip is available so you can sample the actionable strategies before diving in.
However, these webinars are just the beginning. The most effective burnout prevention comes from addressing it on all three levels—individual, team, and system leadership. If you want to take a deeper dive and apply these principles directly within your team and organization, we at Function First Coaching are ready to help you take the next step.
A Three-Pronged Approach: Individual, Team, and Leadership
During the webinar, I focused on key strategies for both individuals and teams:
1. Recognize the three defining characteristics of burnout: Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment are indicators of burnout that must be identified early.
2. Examine your current stress level: Attendees were guided through self-assessments to gauge their own stress and burnout levels.
3. Practice diaphragmatic breathing for stress management: This simple, evidence-based technique can be practiced daily to reduce stress levels.
4. Develop a personalized action plan: Participants left with a plan tailored to their unique work environments and stress triggers.
5. Engage leadership in burnout prevention: Leaders need to be involved in creating a culture where employee well-being is prioritized. Without this engagement, systemic burnout will continue.
However, real change requires leaders to do more than just support their teams passively. They must actively foster an organizational culture that values and promotes well-being. The next step for many organizations is to bring leadership into the conversation and work toward systemic change, creating an environment that not only supports individual resilience but makes it part of the fabric of the organization.
Call to Action: Bringing the Workshop to Your Team
The responsibility of preventing burnout should not rest on the shoulders of those already feeling its effects. If you’re serious about building a resilient healthcare team and tackling burnout from all angles, I encourage you to take the next step.
Connect with us at Function First Coaching to bring this workshop directly to your team and leadership. Together, we can address burnout from all levels—individuals, teams, and systems. By engaging leaders alongside healthcare professionals, we can create a culture that supports well-being and ensures sustainable, high-quality care.
Ready to take action? Contact us today to schedule a workshop tailored to your organization’s needs.
Conclusion
Burnout prevention cannot be achieved through individual efforts alone. It requires leadership engagement and systemic changes that create an environment where stress management strategies can thrive. By combining individual, team, and organizational approaches, we can build healthier, more resilient healthcare teams that can deliver high-quality care without sacrificing their own well-being.
References
– Burri, A., Maercker, A., Krammer, S., & Simmen-Janevska, K. (2022). The relationship between burnout and emotional intelligence in healthcare professionals: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(2), 895. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020895
– Lee, Y. Y., Medford, A. R., & Halim, A. S. (2023). Burnout in healthcare workers: Prevalence, impact and preventative strategies. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 11(2), 126-135. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(22)00259-4
– Mazerolle, S. M., Eason, C. M., & Goodman, A. (2018). Exploring the factors that lead to burnout in athletic trainers. Journal of Athletic Training, 53(10), 1022-1032. https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-410-17
– Shin, H., & Lee, J. (2022). A study on the effects of burnout on medical error among healthcare workers: The mediating role of fatigue and work engagement. Healthcare, 10(7), 1284. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10071284
