Towards better understanding of factors contributing to medical physicist well-being in academic medical centers: A systems-analysis approach.

Abstract

The well-being of medical physicists can impact overall system performance, patient safety, and quality of patient care. There are limited formal assessments of factors contributing to physicists well-being. Nine medical physicists at a US academic medical center were surveyed on 21 workplace factors, drawn from the National Academy of Medicine's systems model of clinician burnout and professional well-being between May 2022 and August 2022. Highly rated factors were summarized and presented to medical physicists in focus groups. Contextual inquiries (a form of shadowing) were conducted to gather additional information about factors contributing to well-being. Qualitative data from the survey, focus groups, and contextual inquiries were used to generate an affinity model, which medical physicists then validated and used to prioritize top factors. Twenty-two medical physicists at the academic medical center and three other US academic medical centers rated these factors by level of impact and level of effort, and improvement recommendations were made based on these results. Key factors affecting medical physicist well-being included inadequate staffing, work-life integration, excessive workload, and time pressure. Twenty-two medical physicists across four institutions prioritized the following top factors for improvement: (i) retain the hybrid work model, (ii) hire additional medical physicists to cover clinic responsibilities, (iii) limit or compensate after hours work, (iv) improve scheduling workflows, and (v) improve communication and visibility from organization-level leadership and administration. High impact, low effort priorities to improve medical physicist well-being across the four institutions include work-life integration, scheduling workflows, and relationships with leadership. These factors seem to be within the improvement control of each radiation oncology center. Further research is needed to establish the generalizability of our findings and spearhead broad policy changes.