How healthcare employers can alleviate staff burnout using technology

Summary

In this blog, Hannah Wilkinson, Head of People & Culture at Radar Healthcare, describes five ways health tech companies can alleviate burnout across the workforce, following recently reported news that as many as 400 staff are leaving the NHS each week due to the effects of stress.

Content

Around 400 staff are leaving the NHS every week due to the effects of stress, including burnout and PTSD, in the workplace. 

Burnout can cause people to make mistakes such as duplications, incorrect information and late data entry, which can cause incorrect decision-making. Working in one of the most passionate and necessary industries, it is important that healthcare workers including nurses, doctors and clinicians are given the right amount of support. 

With this in mind, here are five ways health tech companies can alleviate burnout across the workforce. 

1. Implementing easy to use systems

The best systems are the ones that are effective yet easy to use and healthcare tech companies should work alongside healthcare workers to design and ensure their systems are meeting these standards.

Administration is one of the key tasks of a healthcare worker and keeping on top of this can be extremely stressful and time-consuming—particularly in a fast-paced and hectic healthcare environment. Administration issues can stem from a range of factors including work overload, a lack of supportive technology, poor communication between healthcare professionals, and other inefficiencies. This can all negatively impact the reputation of an organisation, the quality of care provided and regulatory inspection ratings. Therefore, embracing easy to use, paperless methods can improve organisation, boost work ethic and morale, encourage communication and reduce the number of hours spent completing admin. Also, having all documentation in one place will make unexpected inspections less stressful for staff.

2. Having communication touchpoints

Whilst many remote employees are at a higher risk of feeling isolated compared to their in-office counterparts, certain shifts and hours could make a healthcare worker feel alone and isolated during their job. Their feeling of isolation can lead to them overworking themselves, leading to burnout and employee competition because they might feel the need to compete with colleagues that they never see.

To help reduce burnout here, tech organisations can help keep employees engaged by utilising AI technology to create frequent communication touchpoints, such as instant messaging (IM), employee portals, virtual assistants and web-based meetings.

Web conferencing platforms can also drastically improve employee productivity and efficiency, as well as maintaining communication with other employees.

3. Ensuring data is automatically integrated

To reduce the stress of keeping on top of important patient health data and records, ensuring that health data is automatically integrated into platforms will help provide a more robust image of a patient's care journey.

Not only will it help workers avoid mistakes, it will also reduce the manual workload of inputting data, which could cause a worker to do overtime, causing burnout and stress.

4. Implementing an auditing module

Auditing modules allow users to audit their processes on the go, ensuring that the most accurate and up-to-date information is being considered. They can be used to keep tabs on employees’ training, accreditations and qualifications, meaning that everyone is working to the level expected of them, and no one needs to stress about missed deadlines or renewing memberships.

5. Identifying when something goes right

Often, those who work too hard and suffer from burnout are the ones who aren’t praised enough for their work. Whilst having peace of mind knowing that your staff are trained and equipped to do their job is essential, it is also equally important that your staff know they are doing a good job. 

Therefore, it would be helpful to be able to log compliments in the same way that some organisations log complaints, to ensure that teams can see that their hard work is paying off.  Employers can adopt incident management tools to log compliments in order to help increase staff positivity and reduce burnout.

About the author

Hannah Wilkinson is Head of People & Culture at Radar Healthcare.