In recent years, wellbeing has arrived as a science, complete with research and applications. But as a concept, it has existed for millennia. Religious leaders, poets, writers, and (in the last century) secular self-help experts have written about it ad nauseum. It’s no wonder our modern world is fascinated and mesmerized by the concept.
Read MoreThe verdict is in. The research is clear. Individuals who are actively engaged in their work have higher levels of personal wellbeing and productivity, plus lower levels of burnout.
Physician leaders looking to engage their team should avoid these mistakes and ask the important questions.
In an ideal world, leaders are able to work with their organization to build an effective engagement program. But alas, we are often not in the utopia we dream of.
So we ask: what happens when organizations refuse to create effective engagement programs and invest in their employees?
Read MoreWe know that the ability to achieve a flow state regularly in one’s profession is a key indicator of a physician’s ability to engage in their work. It follows that achieving a flow state consistently should be (so often it’s not!) a priority of organizational management and leadership.
Yet, engagement is more than just flow.
Read MoreSince we’re already well-versed in why low levels of engagement are a problem, let’s move on to what’s needed to create engagement, i.e. flow.
Engagement at an individual level has been studied for nearly five decades and there is significant research to bolster this claim. Positive psychology has contributed the most to studying the connection between engagement and flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi popularized the concept of flow as he researched creativity and productivity and conducted interviews with people who were successful in a wide range of professions.
Read MoreThe data speaks for itself, every physician leader should have an executive coach. But when push comes to shove, many shy away from hiring one and never take the steps necessary to improve their leadership and career. Why is this? What’s holding leaders back?
Read MoreBut this isn’t just a “doctor problem”, it exists on the leadership side as well. Physician leaders are pressured to put new initiatives in place and check boxes that they’ve provided “programs” (there’s a vague word) for physician engagement. Rarely are they asked to collect and analyze data about how these programs perform or how they impact the team’s quality of life.
Read MoreTo recap briefly (if you’ve been following the whole time feel free to skip this opening paragraph), we’ve been spending this fall semester bravely wading through the many, varied and interwoven problems in the healthcare industry. More specifically, we’ve been looking at issues related to physician overwhelm and burnout as well as leadership’s responsibilities to work toward a solution.
Read MoreWhile lack of trust in any workplace a serious threat, in the healthcare industry, it’s literally a matter of life or death. Lack of trust comes as the culmination of many of the problems already unpacked and discussed. Because physician training is so far removed from Chief Medical Officer (CMO) or physician leader training (or lack thereof), it’s easy to understand why physicians may be wary of their CMO’s motives.
Read MoreThis week we begin to tackle another sizeable problem in the healthcare field: lack of training. A kingpin of the problems in our field, the lack of adequate training for physician leaders steers the entire industry into a quagmire from which it’s nearly impossible to extract ourselves. The position of physician leader is still relatively new and, thankfully, evolving.
Read MoreLast week, we began exploring the lack of engagement pervasive across the healthcare industry. Nearly every healthcare professional, physicians in particular, will be subject to this struggle at least once during their career. Often, healthcare leaders misunderstand this apparent lack of engagement as a physician withholding their “best effort”, as mentioned last week, which leads us deeper into the chasm of misunderstood motives.
Read MoreIt feels strange, because a physician is arguably one of the “most-trained” positions in the modern world. Physicians spend longer in higher education that any other profession. Yet the career transition from physician to physician leader involves minimal and inadequate preparation in the best of situations.
Why aren’t our physician leaders as well prepared for their role as physicians are? And what can we do to change this for the future?
One of the reasons physician leaders aren’t properly trained is they aren’t given time.
Read MorePivoting from our look at the multi-faceted issues caused by a serious lack of communication in the healthcare industry, today we’ll begin to explore the wide-spread lack of engagement many physicians and clinicians experience at various points throughout their career.
Read MoreThe lack of time built into a daily work schedule for quality communication points us to another uncomfortable truth, which is that occasionally (not always everyone, calm down!) physicians can be difficult to talk to. I’ve often heard cited from coaching clients as a reason leaders feel uncomfortable engaging with the physicians on their team. Now, let’s be clear: Leaders, your discomfort speaking to physicians is not a valid reason to let communication fall to the wayside. It’s an excuse and you know the old saying about excuses, right?
Read MoreThe next problem we’ll begin to unravel is the systemic lack of communication that runs rampant in nearly every hospital and healthcare organization. Over the next few posts, we’ll see how poor communication rears its ugly head in several obvious (and avoidable) places.
Read MoreOver the past seven years or so, the medical community has woken up to the pressing issues caused by the systemic and regular use of locum tenens. In the first decade of the 21st century, hospitals regarded locum physicians as life savers, interim workers who can cover shifts when needed and help lighten the load of overworked full-time staff.
Read MoreYou’ve hit a dead end. Are sailing along at the same level, neither improving nor falling flat. You’re not content and unsure how to level up. Your goals are unclear, your future is fuzzy, your potential feels…untapped.
Read MoreThere are things that will only motivate you for a finite amount of time. It takes a special combination and renewed sense of purpose to create a true leader, bringing a dream from conception to reality. Without the proper combination of core and vision, it’s easy to fall into the trap of the drifter, sleeper or dreamer, instead of realizing one’s true potential as a leader.
Read MoreWe know that a trusted method to fight stress, overwhelm and burnout is to diversity our lives by having more than one support structure, many power initiatives and several career enhancement methods in place. (See our previous post if you missed it!) Yet, that sentence in and of itself may seem a bit overwhelming.
Read MoreDiversification is an invaluable tool in our fight against stress, overwhelm and burnout. It’s the golden rule of investment AND the key to healthy living. In 1952, Dr. Harold Markowitz wrote a groundbreaking paper which launched modern portfolio theory and eventually awarded him the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Read MoreThe thing about stress, overwhelm and burnout that’s imperative to understand is that at some point, the MORE we work, the less productive we become. I call this the Law of Diminishing S.O.B.’s. It’s like trying to scale an ever-increasing incline or a run up an exponential curve – eventually, you’re just falling backwards.
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