“Putting out the Fire”: An Approach to Tackle Provider Burnout

Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment. The prevalence of burnout in medical subspecialities can be significant, with an estimation of 20-40% amongst mental health professionals. Overall burnout in physicians was associated with an almost four times decrease in job satisfaction, doubled patient safety incidents, and turnover intention increase by more than threefold compared with retention. This project was designed to evaluate the burnout and retention of mental health professionals in a community-based outpatient clinic affiliated with the Tampa VA, with the use of quality improvement methodologies to help identify process-related causes and subsequent interventions to improve outcomes.   

Explain the process followed by the Tampa VA Mental Health Service to general quality improvement projects.

Define characteristics of clinician burnout and discuss its prevalence amongst mental health providers.

Describe a lean-six sigma approach that can be utilized to tackle clinician burnout.

Authors

Dr. Adel Elsayed is a board certified psychiatrist, currently working as an outpatient provider at the James Haley Tampa VA. He is also an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida's (USF) Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. Dr. Elsayed has a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, and obtained his black belt lean six sigma certification from Motorola university. Dr. Elsayed currently leads multiple process improvement committees at the VA, USF, and Morsani College of Medicine, while delivering lectures to residents and medical students.