The NHS is in danger of ‘complete collapse’ amid reports that nearly half of senior consultants plan to leave within the next 12 months.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that the NHS is at a ‘breaking point’ after a recent survey revealed that 44% of hospital consultants in England plan to leave or take a break from working in the NHS over the next year.
Such a dramatic loss of senior staff could result in additional staff burnout across the sector. Burnout can cause people to make mistakes such as duplications, incorrect information, and late data entry, causing incorrect decision-making.
Being 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, Hannah Wilkinson, head of People & Culture at Radar Healthcare, shares five ways health tech companies can alleviate burnout across the workforce.
Implement 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 meet these standards.
The 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.
These issues can stem from various factors, including work overload, a lack of supportive technology, poor communication between healthcare professionals, and other inefficiencies. This can negatively impact an organisation’s reputation, the quality of care provided, and regulatory inspection ratings.
Therefore, embracing easy-to-use, paperless methods can improve organisation, boost work ethics and morals, encourage communication, and reduce the number of hours completing admin. Also, having all documentation in one place will make unexpected inspections less stressful for staff.
Having communication touchpoints
While many remote employees are at a higher risk of feeling isolated compared to their in-office counterparts, certain shifts and hours could make healthcare workers feel alone and isolated during their job.
Their isolation can lead to them overworking themselves, leading to burnout and employee competition. They might need to compete with their in-office colleagues whom they never see to compensate for being absent from the office.
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, employee portals, virtual assistants, and web-based meetings.
Web conferencing platforms can also drastically improve employee productivity and efficiency by answering questions, scheduling meetings, booking travel, and giving tasks to complete– and maintaining communication with other employees.
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.
It will help workers avoid mistakes and reduce the manual workload of inputting data, which could cause a worker to do overtime, causing burnout and stress.
Implementing an auditing module
Radar Healthcare’s auditing module allows users to audit their processes on the go, ensuring that the most accurate and updated information is being considered when assessing your teams.
The workforce compliance module can also ensure that the staff’s well–being is a focus. Keeping tabs on employees’ training, accreditations and qualifications mean that everyone is working to the expected level, and no one needs to stress about missed deadlines or renewing memberships.
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.
While 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 also doing a good job too.
Therefore, it would be helpful to log compliments like some organisations log complaints to ensure that your teams can see that their hard work is paying off.
Employers can install an incident management tool for logging compliments to help increase staff positivity and reduce burnout.
