Workplace Articles

Mental & Emotional Red Flags Doctors May Not Realize in Times of Crisis

Before COVID-19, being a physician was stressful. The physical, emotional, psychological, and administrative demands made burnout quite common. In January 2020, burnout impacted 42% of physicians. That number is a decrease from 46% five years prior, but what the number will be at the end of the pandemic remains to be seen. Today, the term “burnout” cannot begin to describe what doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are experiencing as COVID-19 rips through the health...

HCPs Turn to Social Media to Cope With COVID-19

The U.S. is currently leading the world in confirmed COVID-19 cases. John Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering reports that over 866,000 people across the nation have tested positive for the coronavirus and almost 50,000 people have died. Doctors are reaching out to both the general public and to each other. In YouTube videos, they beg people to stay home and practice social distancing. They also connect with colleagues across the world for guidance and support via apps suc...

How to Protect Your Millennial HCPs from Depression

Depression and ‘deaths of despair’ are rising at a faster rate for millennials than for any other age group. Many millennials suffer from loneliness, financial struggles, and employee burnout. Your healthcare organization may see an increase in absenteeism and employee turnover if proactive measures are not put in place. Millennials are the first generation to grow up with the technological advances that completely shifted how we live, work and play. Social media use gave way to inc...

Becoming a Traveling RN: Is It For You?

The concept of a ‘traveling nurse’ was developed in response to the nation’s nursing shortage. RNs are assigned in locations that are currently understaffed, usually for four to thirteen weeks at a time. While the term traditionally refers to registered nurses, it can also apply to a variety of other health care professionals. Visiting Nurse Service is the most popular example of the traveling nurse model in action. A job as a traveling nurse looks exciting. But what does the ...

Women In Leadership Positions: Glass Cliffs

Are women shattering the glass ceiling only to fall off the glass cliff? The Glass Cliff is where women are likelier than men to achieve leadership roles during a period of crisis when there is increased risk of scrutiny and failure. The Glass Cliff concept was developed by Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam and examines what happens when women (and other minority groups) take on leadership roles. This and subsequent studies have found that women are more likely to be promoted to the top ...

Workplace Bullying or Harassment?

Both workplace bullying and harassment create a hostile work environment but what is the difference between them? Employers often treat bullying and harassment as the same class of problematic behavior. However, the law relating to each of these areas is different. While there is no formal definition of workplace bullying, it is generally identified as a persistent pattern of mistreatment directed at an employee or a group of employees. It can include verbal, non-verbal, psychological or physic...

Workplace Harassment

Workplace harassment is more prevalent than one realizes and is not limited to sexual harassment. Harassing conduct includes, but is not limited to, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual attention, offensive jokes and language, ridicules, physical assaults, and threats. Both men and women can be victims. However, statistics show that sexual harassment overwhelmingly victimizes females. Unfortunately, workplace harassment, especially sexual harassment, often goes unreported as victims are unsure of w...

Alleviating Physician Burnout

According to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, physician burnout is at least equally responsible for medical errors, if not more so, than unsafe medical workplace conditions. Physician burnout affects the quality of patient care and is a major threat to the healthcare delivery system. It is a growing problem with no easy solution. Financial compensation is not the only reward to be taken into account. To provide a an attractive offer for physicians, there are...

Are Residencies The Future of Nurse Practitioner Training?

There is a small but growing movement to create formal primary care nurse practitioner (NP) residency programs, similar to those for physicians, where the effort is geared to help them transition to practice. Unlike physicians, NPs are currently not required to attend a formal residency program. The development of NP residency programs began, initially, to fill in gaps in community health centers (HCs) for frontline jobs serving populations that tended to be low-income, uninsured, homeless, men...

Medical Technology is the Future

The Internet of Things is starting to enmesh itself into healthcare on both the doctor and patient fronts and is transforming healthcare. This change is two-pronged: the development in the technology used in electronic health records (EHR) and growth in the use of connected digital medical devices. It is of utmost importance that Medical Recruiters are aware of these trends as it affects their recruiting practices. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH A...