Physician Burnout

Organizational and individual factors have an outsized effect on physician well-being. This collection of AMA STEPS Forward^® practice innovation strategies offers proven approaches, some focusing on the physician and others showing how to partner with health system leadership to improve the culture and prevent burnout.

• Playbooks: Collections of related interventions
  • Taming the EHR Playbook Your EHR system may feel like an unfixable problem. Learn strategies to maximize team-based care, throw out unnecessary rules, and optimize proficiency with EHR technology.
  • Saving Time Playbook Learn how to stop the unnecessary work and share the necessary work. These time-saving strategies help physicians focus on the work that matters.
• Podcasts
  • Mental Health Counseling for Physicians and APPs Rob McGregor, MD, chief medical officer and pediatric hospitalist at Akron Children’s Hospital, shares how he helped create a mental health counseling program for health care professionals.
  • Elevating Joy and Meaning in Medicine Amanjot Sethi, MD, urologist and director of wellness operations at the Permanente Medical Group, discusses the group’s total performance strategy and how it helped put the joy back into medicine.
  • Three Simple STEPS for Diagnosing Your Own Mental Patterns Gail Gazelle, MD, MCC, physician coach and an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, offers three mindfulness techniques.
  • Reframing Compassion Fatigue: Compassion as a Tool for Combating Burnout Rola Hallam, MD, a consultant anesthetist and humanitarian whose enterprise enables health care workers to provide health care in war-affected communities, shares how compassion and self-compassion can combat burnout.
  • Setting Boundaries Kevin Hopkins, MD, primary care medical director at Cleveland Clinic Community Care, explains some practical strategies for setting healthy boundaries to stave off fatigue, exhaustion and burnout.
  • How a Chief Wellness Officer Manages his Own Burnout Kirk Brower, MD, of the University of Michigan Medical School identifies several key interventions to prevent physician burnout.
  • Well-Being Programming for Resident Physicians and Clinical Fellows Laura Ann Hanyok, MD, assistant dean for graduate medical education at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, explores a practical approach to reduce burnout among residents and clinical fellows.
  • Creating a Peer Support Program Angela Chaudhari, MD, obstetrician-gynecologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, describes a peer support program she developed to mitigate burnout.
  • Physician Burnout: One Doctor’s Story Longtime emergency medicine physician Reena Patel, MD, describes how physicians have faced enormous challenges amid the waves of COVID patients and from system issues, such as department cutbacks and an ongoing nursing shortage.
  • No One Left Behind: Expanded Peer Support and Second Victim Syndrome Alicia Pilarski, DO, medical director of the Supporting Our Staff Peer Support Program for Froedtert Hospital & Medical College of Wisconsin, explains how she created a successful program to support health care professionals who have experienced second victim syndrome.
  • Chief Wellness Officer Road Map Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, chief wellness officer at Stanford Medicine, explores how a chief wellness officer develops priorities and develops a system-level strategy for change.
  • Establishing a Chief Wellness Officer Position Learn how to lay the groundwork for creating a chief wellness officer position and hiring the right leader.
  • Scholars of Wellness Program Gaurava Agarwal, MD, director of physician well-being at Northwestern Medical Group, describes how to advance well-being with effective pilot interventions at a system level.
  • Stress First Aid for Health Care Professionals Use compassion and empathy to respond early to stress injuries among health care professionals.
• Webinars
  • Setting Boundaries to Prevent Fatigue and Build Resilience Kevin Hopkins, MD, primary care medical director at Cleveland Clinic Community Care, outlines ways to develop, implement and maintain healthy boundaries.
  • The Scholars of Wellness: Create Wellness Champions Learn how Northwestern Medicine’s faculty development program created wellness champions and supported a journey of physician well-being.
  • Stress First Aid for Health Care Professionals Improve self-care and help colleagues reduce the impact of stress with a peer support and self-care model.
  • Parenting as a Physician: It Takes a lot of Patience Tips on setting limits, balancing family life as a physician and finding the time for family activities.
  • Physician Burnout: It’s Not a Resiliency Deficit How health care organization leaders can address system issues to reduce burnout and promote physician well-being.
  • Beating Physician Burnout with Behavioral Health Integration Physician experts from Henry Ford Medical Group describe how they increased joy and satisfaction in their practice—and offer some practical tips.
  • Building Well-Being into Culture Sanford Health leaders explain how they’ve supported clinicians to help them optimize work-life integration across their careers.
  • Cognitive Workload Learn how stress and task load contribute to physician burnout, and practical STEPS to reduce extraneous load.
  • Protecting Mental Health in Disasters Understand how the range of mental health effects and aspects of risk and resilience are critical to effective disaster response and recovery.
  • The Habit of Gratitude: Being Positively Contagious Better integrate the habit of gratitude into your life and your organizational culture.
  • Rethinking Wellness: COVID-19 and the Search for Meaning Bryant Adibe, MD, system vice president and chief wellness officer, Rush University System for Health in Chicago, discusses wellness, community and our common search for meaning.
  • No One Should Care Alone Mark Greenawald, MD, professor and vice chair of family medicine and community medicine at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, describes how to create processes for intentional professional connection.
  • Physician Stress During a Crisis A look at key findings from the AMA’s Coping with COVID surveys, how to alleviate stress during a crisis, and organizational resources to support physicians.
  • Managing Mental Health During a Crisis Hear suggestions on managing mental well-being while also caring for patients during the pandemic or any other crisis.
  • How to Implement a Peer Support Program During a Crisis A properly implemented peer support program can potentially change organizational culture; here’s how to build your own.
• Toolkits: How-to implementation guides
  • Creating the Organizational Foundation for Joy in Medicine^™ 0.5 Credit CME Learn how positive organizational changes lead to a more satisfied workforce and better, safer patient care.
  • Scholars of Wellness Train physicians on process-improvement techniques to create effective pilot interventions.
  • Stress First Aid for Health Care Professionals Recognize and respond early to stress injuries.
  • Caring for the Health Care Workforce During Crisis 0.5 Credit CME Learn about the stressors a crisis places on members of the team and how to plan for the unexpected.
  • Establishing a Chief Wellness Officer Position 0.5 Credit CME Create the organizational groundwork and make the message clear that your organization values professional well-being.
  • Chief Wellness Officer Road Map 0.5 Credit CME Effective strategies for leaders and organizations to promote professional well-being.
  • Peer Support Programs for Physicians Develop a program with trained peer supporters who can help mitigate emotional stressors.
  • Medical Student Well-Being Learn practical methods to minimize burnout and improve mental health among medical students.
  • Preventing Physician Suicide 0.5 Credit CME Understand how applying standardized processes will help you identify and support at-risk physicians.
  • Resident and Fellow Burnout 0.5 Credit CME Create a holistic, supportive culture of well-being and recognize the value of personal empowerment.
  • Physician Burnout Find practical tips for improving physician satisfaction and patient outcomes.
  • Physician Well-Being Implement strategies to protect against burnout and encourage self-care and resilience.
  • Hospitalist Well-Being Maximize engagement and minimize burnout for hospitalists.
  • After a Physician Suicide Respond compassionately and effectively as an organization after a potentially traumatizing event.
  • Collective Trauma Help your organization anticipate, plan for, respond to, and learn or grow from the most difficult forms of adversity.
  • What to Look for in Your First or Next Practice 0.5 Credit CME Evaluate the practice environment to match your priorities.
• Success Stories: Real-world examples
  • Reduce Burnout with Local and Organization-Wide Initiatives Learn how Carilion Clinic developed organization-wide programming and tailored local initiatives to address burnout.
  • Implementing Strategies to Optimize Efficiency and Workflow to Improve Physician Satisfaction HealthPartners clinic employs strategies to reduce workloads, yield greater satisfaction for the care team and improve the patient experience.
  • Read more Success Stories