You Cannot Pour From An Empty Cup – Using THP to Solve the Burnout Epidemic in Healthcare

• June 2, 2016
• Linda Saggau
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Physicians, nurses and many other medical professionals are reporting widespread job dissatisfaction and burnout. In the Medscape Physician Lifestyle Report 2015, 46 percent of physicians responded they had feelings of burnout, a significant increase from 2013 (39.8 percent). As a result, fewer physicians and nurses are choosing to stay in health care. Alarmingly, research also shows that burnout leads to lower patient satisfaction and quality of care. Organizations that want to improve the health care experience for patients, families and staff members must identify the factors contributing to burnout and find ways to restore the human-to-human connection and provide services that optimize physician and nurse well-being and performance. The secret to caring for patients is caring for our caregivers – because “you cannot pour from an empty cup.”

Our recent University of Minnesota’s Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies article, Seven Lessons In Partnership: How a Hospital and a Happiness Organization Teamed to Decrease Practitioner Burnout, Increase Practitioner Well-Being and Improve Patient Satisfaction, explores how The Happiness Practice was used as an effective burnout intervention among staff members of HCMC’s Emergency Department and Urgent Care teams. We deeply thank our friends and colleagues at HCMC and hope you’ll find their results both interesting and hopeful. Feel free contact me here with questions, opinions or insights! We look forward to expanding this important work in order to change the future of healthcare for the better.