The Importance of Mental Wellbeing in Modern Healthcare Practices
Date Posted: Thursday,
April 28, 2022
Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of healthcare workers should be the number one priority of every healthcare manager and practice owner. The importance of essential workers and first-line medical staff is evident now more than ever.
The demanding nature of the medical profession can exhaust the staff to the point of burnout. Both on a physical and mental level. Realizing the importance of mental wellbeing is the first step. The next step is being proactive.
Caring for the mental health and wellbeing of your employees has to start from the top. Introducing activities and incentives that support mental health is definitely a solution. But, practice management has to insist on keeping supportive company culture consistent.
Why is mental wellbeing so important in healthcare practices?
A recent PLOS ONE systematic review that involved 97,333 healthcare workers across 21 countries showed a high prevalence of depression, anxiety, and PTSD during the pandemic.
More specifically, 22.1% reported anxiety, 21.7% reported moderate depression, and 21.5% suffered from a form of PTSD.
These are high numbers for the healthcare industry. In healthcare, mental health is of utmost importance.
Let's look at some of the mental health effects the staff struggles with:
Decreased efficiency and productivity
An overworked and unmotivated healthcare staff member will operate with lower productivity and be less efficient than well-rested, highly motivated staff.
Decreased efficiency and productivity will inevitably result in higher operating costs and a reduced level of patient care. As a result, your healthcare practice can start losing patients or work at a loss.
By taking care of your healthcare workers' mental wellbeing, you'll boost their motivation and productivity. Without that, you can't expect a significant change for the better.
Depersonalization from work
Healthcare staff might start to appear numb and show a lack of empathy after a while. Depersonalization is a type of compassion fatigue that destroys the ability to empathize and sympathize with the pain of others.
You can imagine that depersonalization is a great issue in healthcare, considering the nature of work.
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, can present itself in many forms and is more prevalent in healthcare staff that works on the frontlines, ERs, and ICUs. These staff members deal with loss on a near-daily level and these are often traumatic experiences that can leave long-term consequences.
Making it through the day and surviving your shift in healthcare looks different from any other industry. There can be traumatic moments, which can result in some type of PTSD. Encourage transparency and send out employee surveys to ask how your staff is doing. Make them anonymous if necessary.
High staff turnover rate
Healthcare practices with staff struggling with mental health will have a high turnover rate and low staff retention.
According to predictions from the WHO, by 2030, we'll have an estimated shortfall of 18 million health workers, especially in low and low-mid income countries. So, the need for retaining good medical staff is now higher than ever since recruiting and onboarding new staff will become increasingly difficult.
Burnouts
Healthcare is a risky category in terms of burnouts. Often due to the long hours, the deficit of workers, and the sensitive nature of the job itself.
Furthermore, consider the increased demand for care and the long hours healthcare workers have been putting in since the pandemic started. It's no wonder that burnouts are so common in this job profile.
Depression
Depression is another mental health toll healthcare workers experience.
According to a 2021 meta-analysis, almost half of the frontline workers during COVID-19 experienced increased levels of depression. That is a huge number. But one that doesn't come as a surprise considering the nature of a job in healthcare.
Lower quality of patient care
All of the above-mentioned mental health issues inevitably result in a lower quality of patient care. As a modern healthcare practice, patient care and employee care should have the same value. That's the only way for your clinic to provide outstanding patient care consistently.
How to support the mental wellbeing of your healthcare staff?
Realizing the importance of mental wellbeing is the first step. The second step is finding out how to support your staff's mental health.
The improvements you can make:
Adequate staffing
Proper shift scheduling is crucial for adequate staffing, so let's start from there. Automated scheduling software can help you avoid overlaps and assign proper shifts while giving your staff enough time to rest in between.
With these shift work scheduling tools, you'll be able to manage time off, create timesheets, or find last-minute replacements with ease.
Dealing with medical billing and coding, such as CPT codes and ICD codes, can also affect the workload of your staff. In cases like these, consider the overhead of hiring additional in-office staff versus outsourcing your medical billing. Your goal is to prevent mistakes while still reducing your staff's workload.
Build a supportive culture
Supportive company culture has to start at the top and be a priority in your practice. Learn to recognize mental health problems before they arise and respond accordingly. Give your employees the attention they deserve.
If your goal is growing your practice and preserving the mental health of your employees, you have to take the shame and stigma out of it. It starts from the management. Let your medical professionals know that you care about their mental health and build an inclusive culture.
Share educational resources
Prepare and share resources on mental health, self-care, and ways to deal with the baggage that comes with the territory in healthcare.
By sharing these materials with your staff, you'll take the stigma out of mental health, and maybe help them find solutions to problems they couldn't pinpoint before. Education is crucial in this aspect.
Covered mental health aid
The least you can do as a healthcare practice manager or owner is to cover the costs for your employees' mental health aids, especially in waves like the pandemic when the toll on your medical staff is greater than ever before.
If you aren't able to provide an in-house aid in the form of a professional to take care of the mental health of your employees, then at least cover the costs of external mental health aids for your staff. For instance, add mental health services to your employees' insurance coverage package.
Automate tasks and processes
If the mental health decline of your staff is connected to their high workload volume, try using automation tools and software.
Practice managers often use automation to prevent burnouts by implementing tools that take some workload off their physicians and staff. Overworked staff isn't a happy staff. With the help of automation, you will improve your employees' work-life balance and boost their mental wellbeing.
Summary
All of us felt the mental health toll that COVID took, but most of all, healthcare workers felt it. They were the first line of defense and went through countless sleepless nights to save lives and take care of people in need.
However, all of this came at a price since the mental health and wellbeing of healthcare workers started deteriorating.
As the practice manager and healthcare professional, the importance of mental wellbeing should be a priority if you wish to lead a modern and successful healthcare practice. And, hopefully, this guide has given you some ideas to implement.
Brandon Hulme is a Product Management Lead at Deputy. Outside of solving businesses' jobs-to-be-done, he loves heading out for a run or hike, traveling to explore new places and people, and sipping on an espresso. https://www.deputy.com/
Deputy
Award-winning software, created by people who know shift work. We’ve put in long shifts, managed countless schedule changes, and juggled complex pay calculations, so we created tools to streamline that work. Today, our scheduling app leads the field in ease of use and speed to value.
