Course 2 – Taking Control of Physician Burnout; Addressing Physician Burnout in Academic Medical Centers (Solve, Succeed, Celebrate)

Who should enroll in this program?

• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician leader or medical system administrator who wants to know how physician burnout negatively affects the quality and value of the care your teams provide, so that you can justify investments in solutions.
• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician leader or a medical system administrator who wants to better understand the causes of physician burnout, so you can design specific solutions for your institution or system that align with your culture.
• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician leader or a medical system administrator who wants to expand their toolbox of solutions for physician burnout by reviewing what other institutions and systems have done successfully.
• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician leader or medical system administrator who wants to discuss burnout with your physician colleagues personally and explore individualized solutions.
• You should enroll in this program if you are an academic physician struggling with the impact of physician burnout, either directly or indirectly, and want to advocate for solutions.
• You should enroll in this program if you are an academic physician struggling with burnout and want to take control and feel less helpless.
• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician leader or a medical system administrator, and you want to discuss and learn from a community of physician leaders who share their experiences, concerns, challenges, and goals with you.
• If you are a physician leader or medical system administrator, you should enroll in this program and discuss and learn from a former hospital executive, department chair, and division chief who has implemented multiple initiatives to mitigate burnout over the last 20 years.

Physician Burnout

Physician burnout represents a significant public health crisis, taking a heavy toll on clinicians, patients, and the healthcare system. Research consistently demonstrates that 40 – 60% of physicians suffer from burnout, which is significantly higher than in the general U.S. working population. Physician burnout threatens the core missions of clinical care, education, research, and community service at academic medical centers.

The well-being of academic physicians is intrinsically linked to the successful execution of he tripartite mission: providing high-value clinical care, training the next generation of healthcare professionals, and advancing medical knowledge through research.

Burnout among faculty significantly impairs all three areas. Most critically, physician burnout compromises patient safety, increases the likelihood of medical errors, and reduces the quality of clinical care. Physician burnout also negatively impacts the quality of medical education and mentorship, creating a cycle of distress in trainees. Furthermore, physician burnout diminishes research productivity through reduced effort, loss of funding, and faculty attrition.

Physician burnout appears to some to be an insurmountable challenge, considering the recent changes in our communities and medical economics over the past several years. These changes include, but are not limited to, the following.

• Increased requirements for clinical production are needed to keep the healthcare system sustainable due to declining reimbursements from third-party and government payers, which are expected to continue to fall over the next few years.
• Despite increased demands for clinical production, the funding mechanisms make fewer resources available from the medical school and/or the health system.
• Decreased investment in educational and research efforts that provide meaning and value to the professional careers of academic physicians, which are expected to continue to decline over the next few years.
• Decreased societal respect and trust in physicians, healthcare systems, and evidence-based medicine are demonstrated through incivility towards caretakers, negative social media discourse, and government-based policies based upon popular beliefs intertwined with personal agendas.
• Increased heterogeneity in the generational demographics of academic medical center faculty leads to corresponding differences in the root causes of burnout. This makes systematic changes less effective in mitigating burnout, as what works for one generation may not work for another.

You may feel helpless to do anything about physician burnout. You may feel the odds are stacked against you. However, it doesn’t have to be like that. You can make a difference with just a little help.

Our 14-class program, titled ‘Taking Control of Physician Burnout: Addressing Physician Burnout in Academic Medical Centers (Solve, Succeed, Celebrate) ‘, aims to equip academic physicians and medical center administrators with evidence-based and experience-based strategies to mitigate physician burnout proactively. The program structure follows our cycle of ‘Solve’ (equipping participants with strategies to address root causes and subsequent coping mechanisms), ‘Succeed’ (positioning your physicians towards meaningful professional fulfillment through a multidisciplinary approach), and ‘Celebrate’ (recognizing your progress along the way).

Navigating the complex interplay of external, internal, and personal factors contributing to physician burnout will require a comprehensive toolbox capable of addressing the challenges unique to your situation and healthcare system.

We will emphasize four key principles throughout the course to meet these needs.

1. Holistic integration: Mitigating physician burnout requires understanding external, system, local, and personal factors through high relational intelligence. Our program will help you weave these threads together in a manner that poises you for personalized strategic planning.
2. Emphasis on Agency and Intentionality: Mitigating physician burnout requires empowering your physicians with agency and intentionality. A typical root cause of physician burnout is the perception that individuals lack personal control over their professional and personal lives. Empowering your physicians with agency and intentionality enables individualizing solutions for physician burnout that surpass systems’ capabilities.
3. Contextual Relevance: Mitigating physician burnout requires acknowledging and adjusting to the unique pressures and complexities of your regional culture, economics, hospital system, and academic medical center.
4. Actionability and Practicality/Critical Engagement: Mitigating physician burnout requires identifying and utilizing practical tools, techniques, and frameworks that consider your region’s culture, economics, hospital system, academic medical center, and individual needs. We present options; you’ll need to evaluate them to determine what works best for you.

Our program offers the opportunity to join and learn from a community of fellow physicians who share similar experiences, concerns, challenges, and goals. We encourage engagement in this aspect of the program.

We present our program in six parts, each composed of 14 classes. We designed the six parts to provide a robust, evidence-based foundation for the “Taking Control” program. The six parts are as follows.

1. Defining and Quantifying Burnout (Classes 1 & 2): We will establish a clear understanding of physician burnout, including its prevalence, characteristics, and consequences, within the specific context of academic medical centers.
2. Investigating Systemic Drivers (Classes 3, 4, 5, and 8): We will analyze organizational and system-level factors unique to academic medical centers contributing to burnout, including administrative burdens, scheduling practices, financial structures, and institutional cultures.
3. Exploring Community and Career Strategies (Classes 6 and, 7): We will examine the role of supportive networks, mentorship models, and proactive career planning in reducing burnout and promoting professional growth.
4. Researching Individual Strategies (Classes 9, 10, 11, and 12): We will identify practical evidence-based approaches for enhancing personal well-being, including work-life integration, self-care, stress management, and resilience building.
5. Analyzing Career Stage Variations (Class 13): We will understand how burnout manifests differently across the academic career trajectory and tailor interventions accordingly.
6. Developing a Synthesis Framework (Class 14): We will craft through group discussion an integrative model to help participants synthesize program learning into personalized, sustainable, well-being strategies aligned with the “Solve, Succeed, Celebrate” theme.

These classes in our program take place weekly, with adjustments made for holidays and traditional vacation times, such as Spring break (please see the site calendar). We recommend attending the classes in person, but each class will be recorded for convenience. Benefits of live sessions include being able to ask questions in the moment and participating in community-building breakout sessions. Watching a recorded class will count for attendance. Each class lasts approximately 60-90 minutes.

Your tuition allows you to attend live classes over 12 months and a 45-minute individual career counseling and/or coaching session with Dr. Lane. You also have access to our membership-only blog, which includes reviews of relevant evidence-based work on physician burnout and well-being, book reviews, and commentaries on topics ranging from health politics to compassionate leadership.

Over the 12 months from the date of your first course, you can attend any live session that is convenient for you from this program, and you can repeat any session that you find helpful. When you have finished attending the 14 classes, either live or virtually, you will need to submit a homework assignment that will be detailed and discussed in class. The ‘homework’ assignment aims to prepare you for further success by emphasizing key processes from the program. Upon completing the homework assignment, you will have earned a certificate worthy of framing from the Physician Career Solution Institute.