Burnout and the role of authentic leadership in academic medicine

Improving Supervisor Confidence in Responding to Distressed Health Care Employees

BACKGROUND

Professional distress and burnout are increasingly common among health professionals. This trend prompted stakeholders at a large multicenter health care system to survey supervisors for improvement opportunities. The stakeholders learned that workplace leaders lacked tools and direction for appropriately responding to distressed employees. The authors implemented a supervisor training video on providing resources to improve employee mental health.

METHODS

Using the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) methodology, the authors conducted key stakeholder interviews to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, an e-mail survey was administered to a representative sample of supervisors that asked about degree of confidence in responding appropriately to distressed employees, with the response options "very confident," "somewhat confident," and "not at all confident." After identifying factors contributing to low supervisor confidence, the research team developed and disseminated a six-minute, on-demand video to train supervisors to respond appropriately to employees during a mental health crisis. The same group of supervisors were surveyed using the same survey after exposure to the video, and responses were collected from those who had viewed the video but had not answered the preintervention survey.

RESULTS

The proportion of supervisors who responded "not at all confident" in the survey decreased from 7.1% (15/210) of responses to 0.8% (1/123), while the proportion of supervisors who chose "somewhat confident" increased significantly, from 62.9% (132/210) to 69.1% (85/123) (p = 0.03). Of the 28 supervisors who had not participated in the presurvey and viewed the video, none indicated that they were "not at all confident." The percentage of supervisors who felt distress "sometimes" or more frequently from navigating and supporting employee emotional concerns decreased nonsignificantly from 41.9% (88/210) to 37.4% (46/123) (p = 0.87).

CONCLUSION

Simple, on-demand supervisor training videos can improve the confidence of supervisors to respond appropriately to distressed employees, which may indirectly contribute to improved employee mental health.

Managing Hospital Employees' Burnout through Transformational Leadership: The Role of Resilience, Role Clarity, and Intrinsic Motivation

Medical errors have been identified as one of the greatest evils in the field of healthcare, causing millions of patient deaths around the globe each year, especially in developing and poor countries. Globally, the social, economic, and personal impact of medical errors leads to a multi-trillion USD loss. Undoubtedly, medical errors are serious public health concerns in modern times, which could be mitigated by taking corrective measures. Different factors contribute to an increase in medical errors, including employees' risk of burnout. Indeed, it was observed that hospital employees are more exposed to burnout situations compared to other fields. In this respect, managing hospital employees through transformational leadership (TL) may reduce the risk of burnout. However, surprisingly, studies on the relationship between TL and burnout are scarce in a healthcare system, indicating the existence of a critical knowledge gap. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the role of TL in reducing the risk of burnout among hospital employees. At the same time, this study also tests the mediating effects of resilience and role clarity with the conditional indirect effect of intrinsic motivation in the above-proposed relationship. To test different hypotheses, a hypothetical model was developed for which we collected the data from different hospital employees (n = 398). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was considered for statistical validation of hypotheses confirming that TL significantly reduces burnout. The results further indicated that resilience and role clarity mediate this relationship significantly. Lastly, the conditional indirect effect of intrinsic motivation was also confirmed. Our results provide meaningful insights to the hospital administrators to combat burnout, a critical reason for medical errors in hospitals. Further, by incorporating the TL framework, a hospital may reduce the risk of burnout (and, hence, medical errors); on the one hand, such a leadership style also provides cost benefits (reduced medical errors improve cost efficiency). Other different theoretical and practical contributions are discussed in detail.