Healthcare could learn some lessons on preventing burnout from air traffic control, which is a high-stress workspace that has a very low burnout rate, said James Grayson, administrative chief of staff at West Cancer Center.
Healthcare could learn some lessons on preventing burnout from air traffic control, which is a high-stress workspace that has a very low burnout rate, said James Grayson, administrative chief of staff at West Cancer Center.
Transcript
How can healthcare learn from other high-stress industries on ways to better manage stress and burnout?
I retired from a career with the Federal Aviation Administration, just under 30 years with them, air traffic control. While most people immediately recognize air traffic control as a high-stress workspace, what most people don’t know is that it suffers from very low burnout. I attribute that to a number of things. But a couple of the big ones are:
One, the technical skills assessment and weeding out process, as it were, is incredibly stringent. In other words, once you make the program as an air traffic controller, you’ve achieved a very high bar in terms of your skill level. That’s no different than physicians or other industries.
Where I feel like we have upped our game a little bit, which is maybe surprising coming from a federal agency, is that we did in 2005, for about 2 years, we did a series of exercises and simulations where we took existing air traffic controllers and people off the street, who had done nothing with air traffic control, and we put them in a simulated environment of 2025 to 2030. In that environment, we upped the volume of the traffic to that level and then we conducted a series of experiments—some with the technology available in 2005 and others with the technology available in automation that can support you in 2025 to 2030.
What we found was in both cases, existing controllers were incredibly unhappy. To do the work in the style that they had been doing it, but in the new volume, created an untenable situation. It became unsafe very quickly. They were also incredibly unhappy and stressed with all the extra automation and technology, even though it made the work very simple. Folks off the street, obviously in the old-world environment did not do very well at all and were incredibly unhappy. But in the new-world environment, because we had asked for certain types of personality traits to be represented in the room, we found several that really enjoyed it.
We used that to start to create some biographical testing and I’m proud to say that while it is still a work in progress, as we sit here today in 2018, we are hiring different personalities than we were hiring before because we know they’re going to have to work that 2030 traffic. They’re going to have to work in that environment, and, yes, their technical skills still have to be exceptional, but their personality traits and their emotional intelligence has to match up with it, as well.
I think something like that can work in other industries, including healthcare and specifically including physicians and advanced practice providers. But it’s going to take a large group of people getting together and sitting at the table and figuring out how to do it.
ATS 2024: Bridging the Past, Present, and Future of Respiratory Care
May 16th 2024The application of artificial intelligence in medicine is anticipated as a highlight of ATS 2024, with sessions exploring its applications in research, radiological interpretation, and pediatric pulmonology.
Read More
The Importance of Examining and Preventing Atrial Fibrillation
August 29th 2023At this year’s American Society for Preventive Cardiology Congress on CVD Prevention, Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, ScM, delivered the Honorary Fellow Award Lecture, “The Imperative to Focus on the Prevention of Atrial Fibrillation,” as the recipient of this year’s Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology award.
Listen
Looking Back on ISPOR 2024: Hot Policy Topics, Welcome Focus on Employers, and More
May 10th 2024Kimberly Westrich, MA, chief strategy officer of the National Pharmaceutical Council, reflects on the most valuable learnings from the 2024 meeting of ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, including lively discussions of the Inflation Reduction Act and workshops on value assessment.
Read More
Promoting Equity in Public Health: Policy, Investment, and Community Engagement Solutions
June 28th 2022On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Georges C. Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, on the core takeaways of his keynote session at AHIP 2022 on public health policy and other solutions to promote equitable health and well-being.
Listen
Posters Characterize DMD Caregiver Experiences, Impact of Gene Therapy on Caregiving Demands
May 10th 2024Posters presented at the ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research meeting explored Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) caregiver experiences and gene therapy’s impact on work opportunities for caregivers.
Read More
A Focus on Women: AUA Best Posters Highlight Female Athletes, Prenatal Care, and Women in Urology
May 9th 2024Three posters from the American Urological Association (AUA) 2024 Annual Meeting focused on urinary incontinence in female athletes, prenatal care for fetuses with spina bifida in California, and the experiences of women residents at the Brady Urological Institute.
Read More