A healthcare organization's leadership team and workplace culture play a huge role in where employees fall on the spectrum of burnout and engagement, according to Katie Lawrence, executive director of ambulatory optimization and integration with Prisma Health Medical Group.
At the Becker's ASC Virtual Event, Ms. Lawrence discussed how a healthcare organization's culture may be contributing to burnout and what leaders can do to address this.
Below is an excerpt from the conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity. Click here to view the session on demand.
Question: How can healthcare leaders help create a culture of engagement at their organizations, rather than a culture of burnout?
Katie Lawrence: We have to think about engagement as sort of a pyramid of needs. A team member obviously wants to have a decent salary. They want to be in a safe environment, and sometimes that means physically safe. Sometimes that means psychologically safe, knowing that their ideas aren't going to get run over. Then there's those higher levels of what really engages team members. Those are things like helping them to develop, helping them to take on new things, helping them to understand where their career path is.
The more we can help team members to understand that one size doesn't fit all and help them to grow as individuals and to grow in their own passion, in turn brings to life the mission, that sense of passion that people have that will help them ward off burnout. Sometimes that means that we are delegating to team members that maybe we wouldn't normally think about delegating to. Or maybe we can help them to lead a small project. This can help take something small off the manager's plate, but also brings the employee into the fold as someone that you obviously trust and that you as the leader are giving sort of insight to, or power to, or that part of them that can be a little bit of a leader in and of themselves.
Another thing that's really important is fostering teamwork, or making sure that the team is truly gelling together. That doesn't mean that we necessarily are doing ropes courses or other things we stereotypically think of as team-building. Rather, it's about helping each other know what our roles are. Does the front office know what the surgical tech's day looks like? Does the nurse know what the biller's day looks like and how each of them play into the roles of one another in order to make that patient's experience the best it can be? It's important to monitor that sense of mission and remind people why the mission is so important. Leaders must continue to tie every individual job back to the organization's theme or mission.
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