Cheers To Friday

Man, am I tired.

I have a whole article ready to go on the causes of burnout, but I think that post will wait until tomorrow…..or Monday.

Do you know what I think is one of the biggest contributors to burnout in healthcare? Expectations. Whether they be the expectations that we put on ourselves or the expectations we assume others have of us.

Then resources. And then communication.

We went live with a new electronic medical record last Saturday. One of the biggest benefits that I got from working at Duke was the experience. Duke strived to be excellent and we were also pushing. I often think that is one of the reasons why I thrive on personal development and project management….or maybe that is what drew me to that role in the first place….or maybe a little bit of both.

Regardless, during my time there, I received amazing insight. I sat with the leaders of the hospital weekly and I was privy to many conversations and A LOT of meetings. Though I found some of the meetings redundant, I also appreciate the organization and how much we were able to accomplish. During my time there, we also went live with a new electronic medical record, did a lot of standardization across pharmacy, opened a new hospital tower and pharmacy and started an array of compliance and performance improvement activities. I also got an introduction to the pharmacy charge side as I was interim manager of Finance before we moved down to Florida for my husband’s job.

This week has been crazy for many reasons. And I have learned to trust myself a lot more. Many of the “problems” and charge errors that we are seeing are things that I warned and pushed to be fixed months ago. Thankfully, many of the things that I pushed to be fixed are now good and flowing correctly, but things like inhalers, and conversions errors because units were wrong, were things that I banged my head against the wall so many times about.

There was a point where I gave up. I was honestly too tired of fighting. I was emotionally spent. And I doubted myself a little because people who didn’t understand the process and didn’t have the experience that I had (but were somehow an “expert” in their department) told me that it was going to be okay. Maybe I should have pushed harder? Either way, the things are getting fixed now.

This happens with big medical errors too. We have seen this with major drug recalls or removals from the market. We have seen this in hospitals. Sometimes the squeaky wheel only gets fixed when something bad happens, a patient dies, or multiple sentinel events happen in a hospital.

Though no medical errors are being made because a charge is not flowing correctly, I know my experience is extrapolated in other areas of the hospital. I have been privileged to work at organizations that always put patient safety first. I’ve been on many patient safety and medication safety committees and those squeaky wheels always got fixed. However, I know that many of my retail counterparts are probably close to giving up right now. They have fought and fought for so long without their leaders or corporations. It’s hard when our personal values don’t align with the values of our organization. We may value safety and relationships, while our organization values profits. Again, I am glad that I haven’t worked in those circumstances but I know many that do….and that’s another contributor to burnout…when our values don’t align. Values don’t just mean the mission they have on the wall. Integrity and all that other stuff. Values mean that we align with the direction the organization is going, what they focus on and what’s important to them. Not what they say is important, but how they show us with their actions what is important.