Burnout was pervasive among physicians, nurses and other health professionals. The COVID-19 pandemic made it much worse. It is causing many health professionals to leave their jobs. To prevent this exodus and decrease burnout, system-level improvements (including decreasing workload and EHR burden) are required, instead of attempts to promote individual resilience. Several national initiatives are attempting this. These include the Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-being (which created a National Plan for Health Workforce Well-being), the first annual national Health Workforce Well-Being Day, the Impact Wellbeing Guide (created by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Dr. Lorna Been Heroes’ Foundation), and initiatives by the American Medical Association such as STEPS Forward campaign. A project titled EUREKA funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality aims to develop a national agenda for burnout research and implementation of evidence-based interventions in learning health systems. #medtwitter #physicianburnout #doctorwellbeing #preventburnout #healthcareprofessionals @ColinWestMDPhD jamanetwork.com/journals/jam…

We advocate for RCTs to generate high-certainty evidence for many important therapeutic interventions. However many structural interventions in healthcare (e.g. staffing, work-schedules) are implemented based on low-certainty evidence, based on tradition, opinion, conventions, constraints. We need to do more randomized trials about how to organize work in healthcare so that we promote retention, prevent burnout, improve professional satisfaction. A good example is this RCT done within Trip.com, a large travel company, that compared: A hybrid model of work from home 2 days a week + work in office the other 3 days vs A traditional model of working entirely from the office 5 days a week. The hybrid model was associated with a lower turnover rate, greater work satisfaction, and no decline in work performance, and no difference in promotion rates. #medtwitter #neotwitter rdcu.be/dKK6i