Safety and Patient Outcomes – Clinician Well-Being Knowledge Hub

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Patient Safety Culture Survey

NAM — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 15:19:30 +0000

Healthcare organizations can use these survey assessment tools to raise staff awareness about patient safety, assess the current status of patient safety culture, and identify strengths and areas for patient safety culture improvement.

Video Toolkit: AHA Team Training TeamSTEPPS

NAM — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 14:18:23 +0000

Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety is evidence-based and can be used by anyone who wants to improve communication and teamwork in healthcare.

A Call to Action: Improving Clinician Well-Being and Patient Care and Safety

NAM — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 13:18:44 +0000

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio collaborated with The Ohio State University College of Nursing Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and Healthcare to create A Call to Action: Improving Clinician Well-Being and Patient Care and Safety. The Call to Action outlines the bi-directional relationship between clinician well-being and patient care, calls attention to the health problems clinicians face related to burnout, and highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts. As part of this approach, state policymakers and healthcare leaders have an important role in implementing evidence-informed policies and practices such as advancing positive organizational culture, promoting wellness programs, reducing stigma toward seeking mental health treatment, increasing access to mental health services, and monitoring the data on student and clinician wellness.

Building a Program on Well-Being: Key Design Considerations to Meet the Unique Needs of Each Organization

NAM — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:12:19 +0000

This journal article published by Academic Medicine discusses the need for health care institutions to pursue provider well-being as a core organizational strategy. Extensive evidence demonstrates the link between physician/nurse burnout and patient outcomes. There are also four major drivers that motivate the need to build well-being programs to address burnout: the moral-ethical case (caring for people), business case (cost of turnover), tragic case (physician suicide), regulatory case (accreditation requirements). Having a well-being program symbolizes an organizational commitment to well-being. The authors suggest having efforts led by a c-suite leader through a chief wellness officer or similar position. They also recommend creating a framework around high professional fulfillment rather than just mitigating burnout. Efforts to promote well-being in the workforce provide a vital infrastructure for health care organizations to achieve their mission.

Association Between Physician Burnout and Patient Safety, Professionalism, and Patient Satisfaction A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

NAM — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 12:57:52 +0000

The following study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, examines whether physician burnout is associated with an increased risk of patient safety incidents, suboptimal care outcomes, and lower patient satisfaction. A systematic review was conducted to extract data from existing literature. Out of the case studies analyzed, results found that burnout is associated with 2-fold increased odds for unsafe care, unprofessional behavior, and low patient satisfaction. This was particularly high amongst early level physicians. This points to a need for health care organizations to address physician wellness through systematic interventions.

Returning to the Sacred Patient-Physician Relationship

NAM — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:37:04 +0000

In this blog post by epileptologist Virginia Thornley, she describes the importance of returning to the sacred traditional relationship between a patient and physician. Where there was once a time where doctors would visit patients in their own homes with simply a bag on hand, is now vastly different from today where there are too many middlemen and regulations getting in the way of a genuine connection. She emphasizes cutting out the middleman and going back to the basics of communication when providing care to a patient. Anything that widens the chasm becomes a barrier to improving the medical environment.

Developing Empathy Takes More Than You Know

NAM — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 19:04:47 +0000

In this blog post for the Journal of American College of Radiology, Andrea Borondy Kitts describes her experience and struggles as a recovering patient after numerous hip surgeries. Despite being a compassionate and competent doctor, Kitts’ surgeon failed to recognize and empathize with the challenges that Kitts faced throughout recovery. Kitts thereby provides several suggestions for radiologists to cultivate empathy for their patients.

8 in 10 Doctors have Experienced a Cyber Attack in Practice

NAM — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 20:44:04 +0000

Physicians, overwhelmingly, are finding themselves the target of cyber attacks due to an increasingly connected and complex digitized health care system. Out of 1,300 physicians surveyed, 83% have experienced a cyber attack of some type. Major concerns include malware, disruption of practice, and theft of electronic patient health information through health care fraud.

The Next Step for OpenNotes Is OurNotes

NAM — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 20:30:35 +0000

To engage patients even more actively, researchers at UCLA and Harvard Medical School are exploring “OurNotes”, a platform inviting patients to co-produce notes with their clinicians. The implementation of this pilot intervention could promote engagement, improve patient-centered care and patient-provider collaboration, and possibly take some of the documentation burden off busy providers.

The Relationship Between Professional Burnout and Quality and Safety in Health-Care: A Meta-Analysis

NAM — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 16:43:21 +0000

The following meta-analysis of 82 studies examines relationships between provider burnout and quality and safety of healthcare. A significant negative relationship between burnout and quality and safety is established. Moreover, moderators for the relationship with quality include burnout dimensions, unit of analysis, and quality data source and for the relationship with safety were safety indicator, population, and country. Although effects are small to medium, the findings highlight the importance of effective burnout interventions for healthcare providers.