The healthcare environment with its demanding pace, packed workdays, emotional intensity and time pressures can put your doctors at an increased risk of burnout. Burnout is the reaction doctors experience from long-term stress characterized by depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and a lack of feeling like they're personally accomplishing things.
Recently, the increasing prevalence of physician burnout (over 50% in some research) has led to questions on its impact on things like:
• Patient safety
• Access to care
• Quality of care
Burned-out physicians have a higher chance of leaving the practice or hospital which decreases access to physicians and continuity of care to patients. Burnout can also be a threat to patient care quality and safety when depersonalization results in poor patient interaction as well as when burned-out doctors suffer from impaired:
• Memory
• Attention
• Executive function
One way you can help reduce physician burnout in your practice or hospital is by using physician scheduling software. Here are four ways on-call scheduling software helps relieve physician burnout.
1. Enhanced Work-Life Balance
Beginning with medical school and throughout residencies and internships, doctors struggle with work-life balance. When there's no balance it increases stress levels. On-call physician scheduling software allows you to schedule up to a year in advance which provides your doctors with their schedules early so they can plan for vacations, family time and continuing education. This can lead to increased doctor satisfaction and less burnout.
2. Provides Flexibility
Often small changes to the schedule must be made. Doctors might need to swap shifts. There could be personal emergencies that mean a physician must pass a problem off to the backup doctor. And in some cases, the schedule altogether as a whole doesn't work properly for the team causing you to have to revisit it. Being able to deal with these types of issues requires flexibility. Emergency medicine scheduling will help with this.
3. Streamlined Workflow
One of the most substantial benefits of a shift scheduling program is workflow efficiency. Given the ever-patient care environment dynamic, a lot could get in the way of your doctors being able to provide quality care. And errors that could arise from the billing process and bulky paperwork need to be considered.
Doctors can easily get caught up in draining tasks like these which decreases productivity. And when your physicians' productivity goes down, your quality of service and revenue do as well. Physician scheduling software can help enhance workflow efficiency and streamline the process, allowing your physicians to concentrate on their patients.
4. Updates in Real-Time
Distributing schedules through emails or posting them on a bulletin board can be a hassle for all involved. Both those responsible for the schedule updates and doctors check to see if they're on call can feel like there's always a step behind. With doctor-on-call scheduling software though, you can make updates in real-time and view them through a web-based portal. Because of this, the stress linked with having to run to the bulletin board or check emails all the time along with wondering if the schedule is correct and up-to-date will become obsolete or disappear.
If your healthcare facility or hospital is ready to supercharge your scheduling process, emergency medicine scheduling software can help. It can increase physician retention, boost staff efficiency, improve patient safety and decrease physician burnout.
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