Preventing Burnout Through Physician Integration: An Organizational Approach to Physicians That Can Improve Physicians’ Personal Work-Life Integration

Abstract

A new paradigm for the hospital/physician relationship is in order. A new prescription for physician wellbeing involves simple changes to the Quality, Service and Business efficiencies, the culture, the learning environment, and the support of physician reilience in hospitals and physician organizations. These simple structural concepts can both improve physician wellbeing, as well as alignment between organizations and physicians, and create the integration that best serves the patient, the physicians, the administration and the other hospital employees in providing high quality patient care in an enviroment of service and transparency. Ten years of research and programmatic implementations support the effectiveness of this holistic approach to physician well-being. The concept of hospital or practice/physician “alignment” is fraught with danger—the danger of “misalignment,” or even the sense that inherent alignment is lacking. The true goal, we believe, is integration rather than alignment. An integer is a whole number that cannot be divided. The reality of hospitals and physicians is that integration is inherent; we depend upon one another, and our patients’ best interests depend upon us being a whole, non-divisible unit. In an age when headlines announce physician and administrator burnout, our 10 years of research led us to propose a prescription of health and integration to increase physician well-being.