Burnout has become a widespread issue across various industries. We see it in parents burning the candle at both ends between work and childcare, teachers trying to educate with dwindling resources, and, yes, medical professionals exhausted from 18-hour shifts.
Indeed, burnout is hitting clinicians at an alarming rate, causing astounding levels of stress and fatigue. But what’s driving clinician burnout, and what can you do about it? Explore the key drivers and see how electronic health records (EHRs) can help or hurt the problem.
UNDERSTANDING THE RISE OF CLINICIAN BURNOUT
When you’re busy nonstop, your tank eventually hits empty. Clinician burnout goes deeper than being tired at the end of the day. It’s a long‑term stress reaction that can cause emotional exhaustion, lack of empathy for patients, and even reduced feelings of personal achievement.
This is an epidemic in U.S. healthcare. Almost 63 percent of physicians reported signs of burnout, and a 2022 study found that burnout-related turnover costs hospitals an average of $16,736 per nurse per year employed.
Feeling this way is only sustainable for so long, with burnout carrying ripple effects for patient safety, care quality, and employee turnover. Clinician burnout can happen for any number of reasons, but a few top the list:
Labor Shortages
Every industry has been hit with staffing trouble in just the last few years, and healthcare has borne a good bit of it. Labor shortages across care delivery have forced healthcare workers to do more with less, from seeing more patients to doing more administrative work. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts the United States will face a physician shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. The timing couldn’t be worse—baby boomer clinicians are retiring just as their generation is likely to require more care due to age.
Work Conditions
Healthcare can be busy at best—and downright chaotic at worst. Nurses and physicians become stressed from shuffling between exams and follow-ups. And to make matters worse, if clinicians must deal with a poor organizational culture where they have little control over how they work and must navigate a hectic environment, it can create a perfect storm of stress, burnout, and turnover.
Inefficiencies
If you add administrative burdens to their already-excessive workloads, clinicians are beyond worn out. And the problem stems directly from the systems they use every day. Notably, EHRs that aren’t user-friendly create redundant tasks and increase documentation burdens, taking up valuable time that should be spent with patients.
HOW INEFFICIENT EHRS CONTRIBUTE TO CLINICIAN BURNOUT
If your teams fight with their EHR software to complete even the most basic tasks, there’s a problem. The time they spend fussing to navigate and input data takes away from patient care—and unproductive EHRs are the leading cause of clinician burnout. Consider the driving forces behind this:
Tedious Data Entry
Clerical tasks add to clinicians' responsibilities; they must record diagnoses, medication orders, and visit notes on top of basic administrative data. Most clinicians already spend time after-hours to handle these tasks, but say that inefficient EHRs add as many as two additional hours in data entry for every hour of direct patient contact. And if there’s a system update? Changes that affect data entry can lead to mistakes, requiring extra attention to detail.
Poor Usability
How intuitive is the EHR software? Usability directly impacts efficiency because a poor EHR experience can cause clinicians to struggle to both access and enter patient information. The more complex the interface, the more clicks, scrolls, and time it takes to navigate workflows, making errors more likely. Your best bet? Implementing an EHR with high usability to better access information—and in a simple format.
Lack of Interoperability
Imagine a primary care physician must coordinate with an oncologist on a patient’s cancer care journey—but their clinical data is housed in unconnected systems that can’t talk to one another.
Poor EHR interoperability impacts communication between roles and practices because neither side can pull clinically relevant data together. Not having access to information can put patient care in jeopardy because vital details, such as medications, prior treatments, and more, can’t be readily shared.
IMPROVING YOUR EHR TO COMBAT CLINICIAN BURNOUT
Could your software solutions be the key to simplifying the workday? Take steps to reduce clinician burnout by implementing an EHR that improves efficiency and streamlines time management. The most effective EHRs maximize operations because they are:
Made to Simplify EHR Workflows
What’s holding your workflows back? Just ask the clinicians. Back in 2017, the Hawaii Pacific Health “Get Rid of Stupid Stuff” program asked employees to assess its EHR to improve workflows. Clinicians were asked to nominate unnecessary or poorly designed tasks. Nixing these redundancies wound up saving 1,700 nursing hours per month across their health system.
What can your organization do to improve workflows? Taking action could easily open up more time for clinicians to spend on patient care and on collaboration with one another.
Designed with Clinicians in Mind
Poor usability inhibits data entry, communication overload causes interruptions, and inefficient workflows impact administrative needs and patient care. However, implementing an EHR built BY clinicians FOR clinicians makes all the difference. Introduce a solution that checks all the right boxes, from accessibility to usability to efficiency.
Clinicians already face significant cognitive and time burdens, so their EHR needs to streamline care delivery. Imagine being able to review real-time information on the move, including vitals and lab results, before appointments. That’s not a dream state—it’s a real possibility with the right EHR.
Personalized to Your Needs
Tired of seeing your clinicians struggle to make do with catchall software that doesn’t move with them? A personalized EHR allows them to tailor patient workflows to their needs, removing unnecessary steps. The operational efficiency benefits alone are significant wins, but introducing tech that doesn’t require workarounds makes clinicians shout from the rooftops (or want to, anyway), encouraging adoption and reducing their stress.
EHR personalization zaps clinician burnout because it can be tailored across a spectrum of needs, including:
- User roles
- Programs
- Patient types
- Regulatory requirements
The best part? You’re in control. Teams don’t have to run to a vendor to make changes. Low-code/no-code EHR personalization enables internal IT teams to roll out updates and new functionalities internally, saving time and avoiding bottlenecks that would come from waiting weeks or months for a big-box vendor.
RELIEVE CLINICIAN BURNOUT WITH JUNO EHR
Clinician burnout is harming an already vulnerable healthcare industry as workers bend to manage data and patients in equal measure. Between labor troubles, inefficiencies, and often chaotic conditions, they reach their tipping point faster—heading for the door. Switching to a new EHR could be a game changer. By implementing personalized EHR software, you can restore calm and control to clinicians.
Juno EHR gives you the controls. Its Clinical Content Builder enables you to tailor workflows with a convenient no-code/low-code design. And when you pair that with Juno EHR’s Build-A-Module, it’s that much easier to make your EHR work for you—complete with personalized modules, dynamic patient lists, and flexible patient views across departments and specialties.
Explore what EHR personalization could bring to your healthcare organization.
