Funding research on health workforce well-being to optimize the work environment (23 February 2023)

Summary

Healthcare is a $4 trillion component of the US economy, and the well-being of the clinician workforce is a major factor determining its effectiveness. Extensive evidence indicates that inefficiency, poorly designed workflows and processes, suboptimal teamwork, work overload, isolation, problems with work-life integration, and a professional culture that expects perfection and discourages help-seeking are currently contributing to high levels of occupational distress among clinicians. Although the problem and its impact on the health care delivery system are well defined, there is minimal evidence regarding effective interventions to drive progress. This knowledge gap is, in large part, due to the near-complete absence of federal funding for research to address one of the critical challenges facing the US health care delivery system.