Burnout in healthcare: the case for organisational change

Burnout is an occupational phenomenon and we need to look beyond the individual to find effective solutions, argue Montgomery and colleagues in a recent BMJ article 

Burnout has become a big concern within healthcare and is associated with sleep deprivation, medical errors, poor quality of care and low ratings of patient satisfaction. Yet often initiatives to tackle burnout are focused on individuals rather than taking a systems approach to the problem. Evidence on the association of burnout with objective indicators of performance (as opposed to self report) is scarce in all occupations, including healthcare. But the few examples of studies using objective indicators of patient safety at a system level confirm the association between burnout and suboptimal care.

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Source: BMJ, 30 July 2019