Oncologists are reporting slightly higher rates of burnout at a time when other specialties have seen a decline. Leaders have offered reasons for the increase, but for Kettering Health, burnout has not been much of an issue.
"Here at Kettering, we have happy physicians and advanced practice providers. Yes, they feel stress and there's more work to do, but at the same time we try very hard to give them balance in their lives," Ken Chaij, MD, executive director of the oncology service line at Kettering (Ohio) Health, told Becker's.
Keeping staff happy despite ongoing challenges, Dr. Chaij said, is founded in trust and becoming more innovative in investing in teams.
"It comes down to trust — it is at the foundation of everything we do," he said. "Everybody is a partner in what we're doing, has an equal voice and knows they can comment on issues and ideas. We have worked hard for that kind of a culture. Every day it's just treating people as a human being."
Dr. Chaij said the system, like most others, has seen fewer physicians applying for positions, and more of its current staff are retiring or planning to retire in the next few years. In past years, the hunt for a perfect candidate who fit with Kettering's culture could be over in a matter of months, but now, Dr. Chaij said it can take more than a year to fill a single position and months may pass without an application to review.
"That shortage plays a part in the stress and mindset of physicians as well, on top of cumbersome EHR, longer days, work-life balance issues, dealing with increased volumes of new patients and managing disease of survivors," he said. "This leads to more and more services that we need to provide and for physicians to manage and oversee. It's happening more and more."
With projections of rising cancer cases and increased patient volumes across healthcare, on top of an ongoing shortage and more physicians expected to retire, "becoming more focused on how we invest in our teams" becomes critical. To help current staff, Kettering is focused on how physicians can efficiently use their time and keeping practitioners working at the top of their respective licenses.
"It's not rocket science," Dr. Chaij said. "It's very basic stuff to help them keep their morale high. It's not the flavor of the month. It's just constantly, slowly working at it and ensuring they're balanced. When a physician comes to you and says they are burned out, we have already failed. So we have to preemptively go to physicians to say, 'I noticed your volumes over the last year have gone up by 15%. You see more patients than anyone else in the practice,' and we have a conversation about what they need."