When a surgeon leaves for work in the morning, and their family asks when they expect to be back home, too often, the answer is simply, “I don’t know.”
Health care providers across the industry are stretched thin and burned out. One recent survey found that 93 percent of physician respondents experience regular burnout, and another study found that the perception of “work overload” nearly tripled the risk of burnout among all health care workers. But while there’s been plenty of focus on addressing the symptoms of burnout, one of its root causes continues to receive less attention: wasted time.
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We all hate when we feel like we don’t have control over our time. Think back to being in an airport 15 years ago, waiting for a flight that’s delayed. There were no phone notifications telling you if your gate changed and no apps to update you on the new takeoff time. You weren’t sure if you had enough time to eat a meal in a restaurant or to work productively at a desk – you had to keep getting up to check some arrival and departure board down the hallway. Your time wasn’t yours.
Medical professionals constantly experience this wasted, inefficient time. Again, take a look at surgeons. Something as straightforward as determining if a patient in an operating room is ready for them is often as annoying as a delayed airline passenger checking the arrival board every several minutes. Perioperative staff often rely on an old-fashioned white board to determine the status of each operating room. This waiting around and doubling back to the board takes time that could have been spent preparing to better care for patients.
Health care workers are placed under high-pressure, high-stakes, high-stress situations and asked to perform like superheroes in an industry that prioritizes squeezing in more and more cases. This has increased in recent years with hospitals deploying new software to add more cases. But adding to a clinician’s workload without improving their quality of life at work will only exacerbate burnout.
One way that we can address this root cause of burnout is by supporting health care workers in using their time most effectively. That involves deploying technologies that make their lives easier.
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New technology should benefit patients and providers alike, but it is becoming increasingly complex, making tasks more complicated and burdensome. New innovations in surgery, for example, may improve the safety and precision of procedures, but if they involve more work, they risk adding to burnout.
While plenty of technological advancements have made delivering care more convenient, they do not resolve the time constraints left on providers, often because demands on time change throughout the day, particularly in a dynamic environment like an emergency room or an operating room.
There have been promising innovations to address these challenges: Advancements in AI-powered documentation can reduce note-taking responsibilities, EHR innovations can improve access to medical histories, and an increase in dashboards can make notifications more convenient. These are all valuable attempts at improving time management. But none of these solutions on their own can solve this industry-wide problem of unpredictable time.
To maximize the impact of technology on care delivery, we need to leverage dynamic technologies to manage time in real time. When health care workers feel their time is used most efficiently, and they can operate at the top of their license, then they will be able to do their best work, which ultimately provides patients with the high-quality care they deserve.
Source: Nuthawut Somsuk, Getty Images
David Schummers is co-founder and chief executive officer of Apella, a health technology company that makes operating rooms work better. He is passionate about finding innovative solutions to challenges in our health care system. With over 20 years of health technology experience, David has led teams that create new standards of care for multiple disease states including spinal pathologies, gastrointestinal disorders, and cancers. In 2014, David became the first commercial executive of Auris Health, a robotic medical company, and helped transition it from an early start-up to the largest start-up transaction in medical technology history, a $5.7B sale to Johnson and Johnson in 2019.
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