Professional Well-Being by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MESH: Burnout, Professional | Psychology | Mental Health | Psychiatry | Self Care
Publisher: American Psychiatric Association Publishing
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Importance of Clinician Involvement in Wellness Initiatives

Although senior leadership support for system-wide interventions is important, a case can also be made for grassroots efforts driven by the desires of practicing mental health clinicians themselves. Some of the power of stakeholder involvement comes from the fact that having control over one’s work environment is itself a key antidote to burnout. For this reason alone, involving clinicians at all levels in workplace decisions will itself reduce burnout to some extent. Even if the first interventions tried are not immediately successful, the process can create a sense of employee engagement, and the team can work together to develop and test the next intervention option (Shanafelt and Noseworthy 2017). All theories about drivers of professional burnout acknowledge the key role of a professional’s sense of control over work. For instance, Maslach proposed six work environment characteristics that are important conditions for employee engagement: control, workload, community, rewards, fairness, and values (Maslach et al. 2001). Other models have highlighted similar factors, including status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (Tillott et al. 2013). When compared with externally mandated changes, interventions or supports derived from the local work environment may more directly increase a physician’s sense of control and engagement (West et al. 2016).

In response to the recognized benefits of local work initiatives, the Mayo Clinic recently reported on the Listen-Act-Develop model for physician-organization collaboration to support wellness (Swensen et al. 2016). The model recognizes that empowering clinicians to contribute to the wellness solutions can likely enhance control, autonomy, and overall well-being far more than anything an administrator or executive could mandate or change alone. The more empowered employees feel to suggest enhancements to the work environment, the more professionally engaged they will be.

The sense an individual employee has about his or her job’s meaning and the employee’s ability to influence outcomes have been termed psychological empowerment (Spreitzer 1995). Employees who feel empowered are typically more engaged in their jobs and committed to the organization (Ahmad and Oranye 2010). Organizational research has increasingly acknowledged the critical role of psychological empowerment in successful service-oriented workplaces, including health care organizations. For instance, a study of nurses in China identified the importance of balancing job demands with opportunities for participating in decision-making and governance in order to enhance employee psychological empowerment (Fan et al. 2016).

A participatory management style with collaborative action planning has been suggested for engaging employees in identifying local factors to improve satisfaction and reduce burnout (Shanafelt and Noseworthy 2017). When leaders acknowledge the critical roles employees play in informing and tailoring effective workplace interventions, leaders enhance the sense of empowerment and control in the workforce. Many of the characteristics that make a good physician or mental health professional, such as critical thinking, data-based decision-making, empathy, and the ability to evaluate and develop solutions to complex problems, also mean that these employees have unique and valuable strengths to contribute to ensuring organizational health and building an engaging work culture.

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