Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Burnout and stress among healthcare workers is a pertinent health issue considering they are at the center of healthcare delivery. Policymakers rely on healthcare providers to ensure the delivery of quality and affordable universal healthcare as entrenched in healthcare policies. This expectation does not seem to match with the number of healthcare providers who are few as compared to healthcare needs. In as much as the healthcare providers are willing to contribute to the healthcare delivery system, they feel that the existing policies do not consider their abilities. The healthcare workforce, as currently constituted, cannot support the increasing demand for healthcare services in the era of a rise and increase in the number of both acute and chronic diseases. As a result, it is important to focus on relevant policies that would help in dealing with burnout and stress among healthcare workers while improving health outcomes.

Competing Needs Impacting Stress and Burnout among Healthcare Workers 

Healthcare providers are committed to ensuring that they deliver on the governments' mandate of providing quality and affordable healthcare services to all. These workers do all they can to ensure that the healthcare delivery system is aligned to the needs of both outpatients and inpatients. However, for these healthcare workers to be effective in this noble role, they must perceive that they have the requisite physical and human resources. The need for relevant resources is crucial, especially at this time when more people are seeking healthcare services. In the past few decades, the government has enacted policies that have brought down the cost of healthcare services (Sterbenz & Chung, 2017). The most notable of these policies is the Affordable Care Act, which has translated to higher access to healthcare services. While this outcome is positive, it does not translate to improved health outcomes owing to the shortage of healthcare services provides. According to Sterbenz and Chung (2018), the patient/physician ratio is high meaning that physicians and nurses have to work long hours to serve a large proportion related to ACA. Working for long hours at the expense of personal time translates to burnout and high-stress levels among nurses and physicians. Looking at this scenario, one can conclude that there are two competing needs: achieving better and universal health outcomes and ensuring that healthcare providers are not overworked. The concerned stakeholders need to find a balance between these two competing needs if they expect the existing healthcare delivery policies to yield the desired results.

Policy/Practice That May Influence Health Workers Burnout and Stress 

Burnout and stress among health workers is a matter of concern for healthcare organizations that depends on them to achieve their set goals and objectives. It is important to come up with relevant policies and practices to reduce burnout and stress levels so that workers perform at their optimum. One of the most relevant practices that a healthcare organization can adopt to deal with burnout is an effective work/life balance plan. In this case, the organizations create a schedule that dictates the amount of time the employee is to handle work-related tasks without room for stretching it. According to Wishner and Burton (2017), the most effective way of ensuring that the employee works strictly within the scheduled time is by having enough employees. Each of the employees is the assigned SMART tasks that are specific, measurable, achievable, realist and time-bound to reduce the chances of being overworked. This practice becomes more effective if the employees are not forced to handle work-related tasks when they are away from work, such as replying to emails or answering work-related calls. Employees who feel that they have a personal time away from work tend to relax and are more ready and motivated to deal with work-related tasks once they are back. Such a practice is efficient as it allows employees to unwind and deal with stresses that may have arisen in their line of work. Other countries such as Belgium enforce this policy by lowing employees to transfer leaves to one another to achieve greater work-life balance (Aumayr-Pintar, Cerf, and Parent-Thirion, 2018). This practice works well with healthcare workers especially those working at emergency rooms and theaters as they deal with patients most of whom are in critical condition.

Critique of the Policy for Ethical Considerations 

Work-life balance is one of the most common and useful policies that organizations use to ensure that their employees are at their optimum to deal with organizational requirements. This policy can be analyzed from an ethical perspective with respect to how it upholds the workers' dignity. Employee burnout and stress ought to be considered alongside other workplace hazards as it places employees at elevated risks of depression owing to demanding and unrealistic expectations. In spite of this fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards are yet to govern work-related burnout. Nonetheless, it is clear that employers have an ethical obligation to protect all employees by promoting their well-being. The policy that requires employers to ensure that their employees achieve a work-life balance has ethical tenets. It is not ethical to overwork employees just because they are few to meet organizational objectives and in turn, compromise their well-being. According to Kowitlawkul et al. (2018), employees need to feel appreciated for their efforts and the best way to do so it to allow them to have personal time to revitalize. Sapping their energy to meet organizational goals is not ethical as it puts them at the risk of developing burnout and work-related stress.

Organizations that allow their employees to take regular breaks from work-related tasks as a way of promoting work-life balance promote ethics that ride on fairness and dignity. While this policy seems to promote ethics, it is quite challenging, especially in the healthcare delivery sector. The reason for this is the fact that more than ever, there is a rise in the number of people seeking these services due to friendly healthcare policies. According to Patel et al. (2019), in as much as healthcare institutions would like to release the workers to have extended personal time, it is not practical as the workload is too much. The workers not only have to deal with an increase in demand with the number of individuals seeking healthcare services, but they have to implement governments’ healthcare objectives. In this case, then healthcare workers have to work in labor-intensive environments without regular breaks, which go against professional ethics. In the end, healthcare workers have to push their limits to take care of an ailing population just so to deliver on the government’s objective.

Policy/Practice Changes Recommendations for Balancing the Competing Needs 

Healthcare organizations that are focused on addressing workers' burnout and stress may consider emphasizing teamwork and collaboration. Employees must be encouraged to work together in multidisciplinary teams as a way of dealing with burnout and work-related stress. According to Wishner and Burton (2017), collaboration and teamwork help reduce anxiety for individuals who think that the task assigned to them is associated with extremely high expectations. Team members act as a cushion against such as feeling as they empathize with one another and in this way, reduce anxiety. Working together in unified projects helps to strengthen work relationships giving the workers a time to unwind and relax. Teams allow all workers to feel valued, considering that they are given a chance to contribute his or her ideas for the benefit of the common project. Collaborations and teamwork are a great way of balancing the competing needs of workers and resources as more is done in shorter periods. In this way, workers tend to have more time to focus on personal issues as compared to working on independent projects, which may be labor-intensive.

References

Aumayr-Pintar, C., Cerf, C., & Parent-Thirion, A. (2018). Burnout in the Workplace: A review of data and policy responses in the EU . Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Kowitlawkul, Y., Yap, S.F., Makabe, S., Chan, S., Takagai, J., Tam, W. W. S., & Nurumal, M. S. (2018). Investigating nurses’ quality of life and work‐life balance statuses in Singapore. International Nursing Review, 66(1), 61-69.

Patel, Rikinkumar S. et al. “A Review on Strategies to Manage Physician Burnout.” Cureus , 11(6), e4805.

Sterbenz, J. M., & Chung, K. C. (2017). The Affordable Care Act and Its Effects on Physician Leadership: A Qualitative Systematic Review. Quality Management in Health Care , 26(4), 177–183.

Wishner, J., & Burton, R.A. (2017). How Have Providers Responded to the Increased Demand for Health Care Under the Affordable Care Act? Urban Institute. Retrieved from https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/94396/2001576-how-have-providers-responded-to-the-increased-demand-for-health-care-under-the-affordble-care-act_0.pdf