ABSTRACTThe chief medical officer (CMO) is a key member of the administration of most large health care systems. The CMO helps with communication between the medical staff and the nonphysician ...administrators. The CMO typically plays an important role in utilization review, ensuring compliance with laws and regulations, peer review, credentialing, and privileging. One of the most important roles of the CMO has been to improve quality and safety while keeping costs under control, although now many institutions also have quality and safety officers. In addition, the CMO plays a major role in advising the administration regarding clinical equipment purchases, including those for emerging technologies, and in long-range clinical planning.
ABSTRACTPeer review can be utilized to increase the quality of care for patients by upgrading the performance of all the providers by identifying learning opportunities. Peer review can identify ...providers whose care is below the standard of care and recommend actions to correct the situation. Peer review is also important to satisfy requirements of the government and The Joint Commission. Ongoing professional practice evaluation and focused professional practice evaluation have been required since 2008 to help insure that providers are rendering excellent care, and the results of these evaluation procedures are also utilized in privileging decisions.
ABSTRACTSuggestions to improve the well-being in medical students include establishing learning communities, having pass-fail grading at least in the freshman and sophomore years, giving the students ...some control over their learning environment (such as with evaluations and serving on the curriculum committee), encouraging more protected time and more money for faculty teaching and mentoring, and eliminating mistreatment of medical students. Also, the Medical Student and Physician Well-Being Index should be freely available to the medical students and staff for both self-evaluation and for evaluating the learning environment. Burnout in medical school may continue in residency and not only causes misery to the individual, but adversely affects professionalism and patient care.
ABSTRACTProblems in the learning environment are the main contributing factors to medical student burnout. These issues include stresses from mistreatment, poor support, cynical supervisors, pressure ...to get good grades and learn a huge amount of information quickly, fatigue, lack of control, and so on. Personal risk factors include having been seriously ill recently, having a low grit score, being in debt, and having a job.
ABSTRACTThe chief medical officer ideally has a degree in business, hospital administration, or related subjects and has also pursued training in leadership. This is very important to be able to read ...and interpret financial documents, understand the language of hospital executives, and be able to advise the administrators and physicians on many projects. The chief medical officer must be trusted by both the C-suite executives and the medical staff and be able to communicate effectively and diplomatically with both. In order to optimize value, it is important to engage the medical staff and to align the goals of not only the executives and doctors, but also of the patients and their families.
ABSTRACTMatriculating medical students have a low degree of psychological distress. Yet, over time burnout, suicidal ideation, and evidence of depression become quite prevalent among medical ...students. Often, approximately 50% of the students and sometimes more suffer from burnout. The prevalence of depression in different studies varied but was often approximately 20%. Suicidal ideation in medical students in various articles had a prevalence of approximately 6% to 11%.
ABSTRACTLeadership is very important to reduce burnout and promote happiness in the healthcare workplace. Whereas burnout and unhappiness lead to doctor turnover, more errors, more accidents, and ...decreased patient satisfaction, joy in the workplace results in better patient care, enhanced engagement and productivity, and more profitability for the healthcare organization. Many leadership characteristics are critical including integrity, putting the well-being of others first, being fair, standing for important principles, being a good role model, being an excellent communicator, encouraging new ideas and adopting them when feasible, and loving people.
ABSTRACTMentoring and coaching are activities that are quite helpful in having doctors become happy, engaged, and successful in their work and also help prevent burnout. Coaching helps promote a ...better balance between work, rest, family, and fun pursuits. Coaching also helps the one being coached develop better emotional awareness, become more cognizant of the good he/she has done, develop a positive outlook on life, find more meaning in work, and be better able to overcome obstacles. In ways such as these, the coach helps his/her client become more resilient and recover from burnout.
ABSTRACTSome of the causes for resident burnout and other impairments of wellness are the same as for other physicians, but some are quite different. For example, residents have much less autonomy ...and control, are under more pressure to learn a huge amount of information quickly, are more frequently evaluated, have stress from taking more examinations, and have more financial pressure than a typical physician who has graduated from formal training. Residency education also involves oversight from the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education, which seeks to decrease some of the pressures of residency, but an unintended consequence of their limitation of work hours has been, in some programs, the phenomenon of “work compression.”
ABSTRACTA lack of well-being, including burnout, is common among residents. Suggestions to combat these issues include promoting a sense of collegiality and camaraderie in the medical community, ...talking to residents with respect, remedying the reasonable complaints of residents in a reasonable time frame, offering well-being newsletters, having curricula in narrative medicine, encouraging more exercise, and having coaching programs. Suicide prevention programs are also important.
