The great resignation is upon us.  One in five health-care workers has left their job since the pandemic started.  Geriatrics and palliative care are not immune to this, nor are we immune to the burnout that is associated with providers leaving their jobs. 

In today’s podcast, we talk with Janet Bull and Arif Kamal about what we can do to address burnout and increase resiliency, both from an institutional and individual perspective.   Janet Bull is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovations officer at Four Seasons Hospice and Arif Kamal is an oncologist, palliative care doctor and researcher at Duke.

We discuss Arif’s and Janet’s article published in JPSM on the prevalence and predictors of burnout among hospice and palliative care clinicians, as well as Arif’s Health Affairs article on the policy changes that are key to promoting sustainability and growth of specialty palliative care workforce.  In that later article, Arif found that among many things:

• Burnout was reported by approximately one-third of physicians, nurses, social workers, and other respondents in the specialty of hospice and palliative care
• The presence of burnout was associated with increased odds of intending to leave early

If you want to learn more about what you can do to promote wellness on your team, check out this article Arif published with other colleagues in JPSM titled the “Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know about Implementing a Team Wellness Program.”

Eric