executive coaching — Blog — Dr. Harjot Singh

What’s been discovered within the realm of physician (and other healthcare professionals) wellbeing, is startling, to say the least. The healthcare industry can be highly toxic, resulting in unprecedented levels of depression, suicide, suicidal ideations, physician turnover, presenteeism, and general dissatisfaction with work and life. But the condition that precedes these and is most readily associated with physician wellbeing is burnout. This, above all, is what we must be working against in our field.

4 Questions Physician Leaders Should Strive to Answer

Recently, we’ve discussed the lack of flow in many physician’s daily work life and how that lack of flow, over time, leads to a disengaged and dangerously burnt out team of physicians. We’ve also outlined 5 important mistakes for physician leaders to avoid when putting in place an engagement plan. In addition to avoiding mistakes, every physician leader striving to form an effective, engaged, and highly functioning team, must be asking the following four questions.

What is "Flow" and how does it contribute to Physician Engagement?

Since 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.

Lack of Accountability

But 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.

Lack of Connectivity

To 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.

Lack of Training: Leader overload

Leaders are often saddled with the ultimate responsibility for physician burnout, which is a fair point. However, an untrained leader who is unable to successfully inhabit their own role is not equipped to help others avoid career pitfalls that they themselves have not avoided.

Step Zero: Don't Join the Empire!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived an angsty teenager named Luke Skywalker, who wanted nothing more than to attend the Imperial Academy and become a fighter pilot for the Empire.

Wait, what? That can’t be right…

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