Ease of Work and Practice Efficiency
Burnout among physicians, advanced practice providers, registered nurses and other clinicians is an occupational syndrome driven by the realities of our work environment. According to data collected by the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience, over one-half of clinicians experience symptoms of burnout during their careers. In order to tackle burnout, we must recognize it is not primarily a personal resiliency issue, but instead woven into the conditions of work. Personal resilience and attention to one’s individual health are critically important to overcoming burnout, but this is only part of the well-being equation.
About Workplace Efficiency and Well-Being
In order to address the factors that contribute to burnout for our own clinicians, the Johns Hopkins Office of Well-Being is collaborating with partners across Johns Hopkins Medicine to look at systems, processes, and practices that promote the well-being of our clinical faculty and staff. And we are working to mitigate the things that get in the way of professional fulfillment and work life balance.
In addition to our work within Johns Hopkins Medicine, we have joined the Healthcare Professional Well-being Academic Consortium (PWAC), which enables us to collaborate, share interventions and benchmark data with peer institutions across the country. We are also part of the Leadership & Working Group for the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience.
Highlighted Projects
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Prior Authorizations are an administrative burden for prescribing clinicians and team members. They are associated with care delays and can lead to treatment abandonment.
Office of Well-Being is partnering with the pharmacy and medicine departments to pilot new workflows aimed at reducing overall work effort and redirecting time to more meaningful work. This pilot intervention will be at six DOM primary care clinics.
This pilot project is supported by the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation and will continue through spring 2024.
The American Medical Association named prior authorization reform as a priority advocacy initiative. Click here for resources from the AMA
Want to learn more about how this pilot is being rolled out at Hopkins? Contact us.
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The Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Well-Being is pleased to offer a small grant/practice innovation program to address workplace efficiency challenges and help our teams decrease the burdens that get in the way of joy in health care. The purpose of this program is to support clinician-driven, organization-directed interventions that support efficiency of practice.
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The volume of in-basket messages has grown exponentially over the past few years, and has become a source of burnout. To address this, Johns Hopkins created the Great 8 optimization initiative, providing training for clinicians to help them more efficiently manage MyChart communication. Over a one hour training clinicians learn how to categorize common Basket tasks into 8 efficient workflows to improve collaboration among teams and accuracy of patient responses. Current goals aim for all ambulatory physicians/practitioners, department managers and leaders, and clinical/nonclinical staff who use Epic to be trained in the Great 8 process by December of 2022.
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A work efficiency initiative that brings Epic experts to individual hospital clinics for two weeks of focused team-based and one-to-one training. The Sprints are designed so that people are get relevant training in the production environment, with solutions tailored to their needs. The program, modeled after one at the University in Colorado, was piloted in General Internal Medicine at Green Spring Station in June 2021, and will be rolled out in Neurology in the coming months.
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The Office of Care Transformation directs performance improvement programs across Johns Hopkins Health System designed to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, consistency, and affordability of health care delivery for patients and providers. Through a programmatic and disciplined strategy, the Vice President of Care Transformation engages front-line health care providers to implement initiatives that eliminate barriers to care delivery, facilitate evidence-based practice, and harmonize system-wide practice standards.
Care Transformation programs include the Providers Aligned in Care Transformation (PACT) initiative. Through PACT, the Office of Care Transformation and Armstrong Institute engage multidisciplinary clinical teams to design and implement performance improvement solutions to “make Hopkins easy”, with resources that include evidence-based guidelines fully integrated in the EHR. The craniotomy and cardiac catheterization services recently participated in PACT. During their eight-month partnership, the clinical teams redesigned their care to increase effectiveness, which included scheduling and performing procedures more efficiently, providing better outcomes through patient education, and improving the patient and provider experience. If your clinical team is interested in leveraging PACT, contact Pamela Johnson and Rebecca Stone.
Learn more (JHED required)
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The medical transcription software was one of the first initiatives announced by JHMto improve work efficiency, and now has about 1,500 consistent users. Clinicians say the voice recognition tool seamlessly transcribes in Epic in real time, creating a work day that is more efficient and focused on patients.
Efficiency of Practice Resources
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The Steps Forward program contains a diverse set of toolkits addressing the organizational and individual factors affecting health worker well-being. The toolkits offer strategies to engage health system leadership, understand and address health worker burnout, as well as plans for developing a culture that supports well-being.
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The NAM Clinician Well-Being Collaborative is working urgently to deliver a National Plan for health workforce well-being, and recently released a draft plan for public input. The National Plan will build on almost six years of collective work among NAM’s network of 200 organizations committed to reversing trends in health worker burnout.
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The Institute is partnering with worldwide experts to offer online courses and coaching to combat the epidemic of health worker burnout. The course shares quality improvement methods to create positive work environments that stimulate collaboration and equity among health professionals while delivering high-quality care, even in stressful times.
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This Advisory contains steps that different stakeholders can take together to address health worker burnout. It calls for change in the systems, structures, and cultures that shape health care. Given the nature and complexity of the challenges outlined, this Advisory is not intended to be comprehensive in its recommendations.
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The Johns Hopkins Medicine Vital Conversations podcast explores the many factors that affect workplace well-being in health care. We take on complex topics through engaging conversations with thought leaders, bringing a range of perspectives and approaches to making work better. Whether you are a health care executive, front-line manager, clinician, researcher or a patient, we invite you to be part of this well-being journey.