Building Bridges

Doctors are unhappy. Disenchanted with the practice of medicine, and dissatisfied with personal and professional life, many entertain the notion of alternative careers. Declining reimbursement, increasing workload, diminishing autonomy, and encroaching bureaucracy have robbed medical practice of joy and reduced it to wearisome drudgery. This disturbing trend emerges at a time when physician leadership in hospitals has never been more crucial.Physician engagement is essential to providing quality care, ensuring patient safety, providing an outstanding experience for patients and families, and building healthy communities. Since doctors and hospitals are inevitably and inextricably bound together in the care of our patients, it is imperative that hospitals help doctors find purpose, meaning, and fulfillment in life while working alongside the hospital to create a healing experience for the suffering and ill who seek our help.This publication:• Digs beneath the surface of traditional physician satisfaction concepts to uncover the secrets contributing to deeper physician loyalty• Describes three indispensable elements that provide a solid foundation for physician-hospital relationships• Provides a four-step approach to optimizing first impressions when introducing new doctors to the hospital• Demystifies the concept of wholeness as it applies to patients and physicians• Provides a simple tool to assess a hospital's approach to the well-being of staff physicians• Delineates a five-step approach to stimulate thinking about the growing cultural and religious diversity characterizing current-day medical staffs• Illuminates the peak level of human fulfillment as described by Maslow and its practical application to physicians• Provides a rich resource of readily transferable templates, tools, and initiatives designed to jump-start efforts to strengthen engagement with doctors• Provides a provocative glimpse at promising future directions in physician engagement