Research News

Reduce Employee Burnout and Optimize Organizational Thriving (REBOOT)

May 31, 2024

Workplace cultural and organizational factors are the primary drivers of healthcare burnout; however, the COVID-19 pandemic had a great effect on burnout due to the tremendous demands placed on healthcare providers and staff. The Reduce Employee Burnout and Optimize Organizational Thriving (REBOOT) initiative is a long-term effort to address major factors contributing to burnout and to promote wellbeing among employees in the VHA. In response to feedback from VA employees, on September 6, 2022, REBOOT announced a set of actions to implement across seven priority areas:

• Implement Chief Clinician Wellbeing Officer (CWO): The CWO’s role would be to engage, advocate for, and foster wellbeing among clinical staff.
• Optimize meeting practices: Encourage and incentivize the use of effective meeting practices, including the frequency and length of meetings.
• Optimize TMS education and training: Streamline approaches for employees to gain vital education and training, such as the use of test-out options.
• Strengthen mental health support: Increase investments in mental health resources, ensuring employees know what resources are available and how to ask for support.
• Address clinical team inefficiencies: Empower and reward leaders and teams at all levels to identify and eliminate inefficiencies for clinical staff.
• Maximize use of HR policies/flexibilities: Encourage and actively use all available HR flexibilities to boost employee wellbeing, retention, and recruitment efforts.
• Strengthen culture of servant leadership: Increase the practice of servant leadership principles (i.e., leaders strive to serve and support others) at all levels of the VHA organization.

Health Systems Research (HSR) has supported research evaluating the impact of initiatives launched under the REBOOT effort and burnout remains a HSR research priority under engagement science. For example, HSR supported initial research on the nursing schedule flexibility known as "72/80." The Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) and their Evidence Based Policy Centers supported additional REBOOT implementations and evaluations. For example, QUERI supported the assessment of policy changes and implementation supports for 72/80 scheduling for inpatient nurses on the reach and adoption of the 72/80 alternate work schedule, and the effectiveness of 72/80 scheduling on key workforce outcomes (i.e., recruitment, retention, burnout, and employee work-life satisfaction). QUERI also supported an evaluation of the CWO program, assessing baseline readiness to implement the CWO initiative and the organizational characteristics of the 18 VA Medical Centers selected for early implementation of the CWO initiative.

Future research should evaluate the impact of the long-term impacts of REBOOT efforts and other related interventions that reduce workforce burnout and improve Veteran outcomes.

For updates on REBOOT’s efforts, check out the presentation from REBOOT leadership, which includes details on the practices they are trying to implement across the VA healthcare system.

**If you have questions or are interested in learning more about REBOOT and their interventions for burnout, please contact the REBOOT team at vhareboot@va.gov and check out their webpage: https://vaww.insider.va.gov/reducing-employee-burnout/ [This is accessible by VA Intranet ONLY].

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