By Cedaleia Graham, Communications & Marketing Intern
Working in a rapidly changing and increasingly stressful environment, physicians are finding themselves spending less time focusing on their wellness and more time overworking themselves to the point of burnout.
In one of our recent OMD Educates webinars, A Taste of QI for your CPSO Project, OMD Advisors discussed many ways to improve physician wellness and decrease burnout—to benefit your personal Quality Improvement (QI) projects or your CPSO QI project, as well as your own health and well-being.
Katie Peter, an OMD Advisor located outside of Almonte, Ontario, discussed how the QI journey becomes more meaningful when it’s not just for the sake of doing a QI project. During the recorded webinar, she walked through the QI journey.
Starting with the beginning of the journey, it’s important to learn to identify what challenges you’re facing, and how you can relate them to your everyday life.
After identifying the challenges, determine which of these everyday actions are weighing down on your QI journey.
“An important aspect is identifying the priorities that we have control over,” says Katie. “Once we determine this and improve those aspects, we must explore and understand what had caused the issue before jumping into the solution. This allows us to regain our thoughts and understand the situation firsthand before implementing strategies that may not be of importance.”
One of the key factors in improving the QI journey is ensuring that you have enough personal time allocated outside of work hours, to go for a walk, take a screen-free lunch break, or go to the gym. It’s important to implement these activities into your schedule, while continuously assessing progress and adapting to achieve the desired results.
Your personal wellness should be a key consideration in the quality of patient care you administer. Whether that’s spending time with friends, reading a book, going to the gym, eating a healthy and well-balanced meal, or another wellness activity, scheduling this time is important to ensure your wellness.
When factoring in which aspects to include in your schedule—to improve overall QI—it is essential to keep it small and simple. Equally as important: make it achievable and enjoyable.
Interested in learning more about the QI journey? Check out Katie Peter’s breakout room recording for more information—and don’t forget to stay up to date on future OMD Educates webinars! Additionally, our annual Digital Health and Virtual Care Conference returns September 29 and 30, where OntarioMD Peer Leaders will show you and your staff how to get more clinical value for your practice and your patients from digital and virtual care tools. Click here to register for the conference, as well as more information regarding the QI session.
If you’d like to speak to an OMD Advisor on how to introduce wellness activities that will have a positive impact on your QI goals, contact us at support@ontariomd.com and we can start working with you to make improvements to your work-life balance.
