Utilizing a Systems and Design Thinking Approach for Improving Well-Being within Health Professions' Education and Health Care

By Mary Jo Kreitzer, Kennita Carter, Darla Spence Coffey, Elizabeth Goldblatt, Catherine L. Grus, Pinar Keskinocak, Maryanna Klatt, Ted Mashima, Zohray Talib, and Richard W. Valachovic

January 7, 2019 | Commentary

 

Stress and burnout impact all of the health professions, from education to practice, with potentially serious negative consequences for patients, students, trainees, and health care professionals [1,2]. As a result, organizations are taking action to implement stress reduction and well-being initiatives at their institutions. Some of these interventions take place within the learning environment while others target the practice environment. Despite these laudable efforts, it remains unclear in most instances how each organization developed its plans for selecting a particular intervention and who was engaged in developing the intervention.

This paper highlights two approaches—design thinking and systems thinking—that could be used for developing strategies to address stress and burnout and to improve the well-being of students, trainees, faculty, and healthcare professionals. The authors further suggest that combining these two approaches may create a more powerful method to examine stress and burnout and the strategies to address both. The paper reviews each approach and then provides an example of what a combined design thinking and systems thinking approach to the reduction of burnout might be like. The authors recognize that this is not the only solution to developing plans to reduce stress and prevent burnout, but hope that presenting this approach might help organizations think about how to address reducing stress and burnout in their workforce.

Systems and Design Thinking Approach for Improving Well-Being within Health Professions' Education and Health Care