An Organizational Improvement Model for Preventing Burnout of Healthcare Employees

Abstract

Stress and burnout are common among healthcare workers, with negative implications for their personal and organizational objectives. They have higher rates of suicides, traffic accidents, psychosomatic illness, consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Healthcare organizations also face the consequences of decreased motivation, increased absenteeism and high turnover of their employees. To carry out their task of providing a safe, effective, fast and efficient service to their customers, employees need to be motivated. In this article, five preventive mechanisms to increase employee motivation are proposed: 1) eliminating systemic conflict and friction among employees by improving the definitions of roles, responsibilities, and authorities; 2) improving resource distribution criteria among different patient-centered organizational processes so that the expected results are correctly correlated to resource availability; 3) ensuring that the organization detects potential deficiencies in the knowledge/competence of its personnel in a pro-active manner and providing them with the necessary training to perform their assigned tasks; 4) defining and using internal communication channels to communicate the objectives of the organization and the results obtained, facilitating employee participation and recognizing their contributions; 5) creating a feedback loop between employees and the management to measure, analyze, and continuously improve their motivational levels.