Mitigating Physical Therapist Burnout For A Better Patient Experience

Like any occupation in the medical industry, physical therapy can be quite a stressful job. After all, physical therapists (PTs) don’t just have to help their patients get better but they also have to conduct documentation properly, ensuring that each session is properly recorded. Unfortunately, this often results in physical therapist burnout.

According to the American Physical Therapy Association, PT burnout numbers have increased since the pandemic, with 45% to 71% of PTs reporting the experience. This is because they usually spend more time documenting patient sessions than treating their patients. Some PTs even take their work home, causing them to miss out on some much-needed personal time. Thankfully, there are ways to mitigate the burnout that physical therapists experience.

Here’s a deep dive into how PT burnout affects your patient’s experience and the different ways it can be mitigated or avoided entirely.

Physical Therapist Burnout: How It Affects The Patient Experience

When discussing physical therapist burnout, it’s natural to think it only affects the physical therapists themselves. However, this notion couldn’t be further from the truth; while PTs are indeed the first ones affected by burnout, it also affects a patient’s experience as well. Here are the different ways PT burnout impacts the patient experience:

Patient Care Worsens When PTs Experience Burnout

Physical therapists, and medical practitioners in general, are in the business of helping people get better. As such, their full attention must be on the patient when treating them. Unfortunately, when physical therapists are experiencing burnout, they’re more exhausted than usual. Additionally, their mind will be more occupied with other tasks that can distract them from properly treating their patients.

As a result of this distraction and exhaustion brought about by burnout, the quality of patient care can worsen. This is because it might lead to the physical therapist scrambling to recall the treatments they’ve already done for the patient, which can be detrimental to their recovery process.

Additionally, in the worst-case scenario, physical therapist burnout might even delay the treatments entirely as it could cause the PT to become sick or resign entirely. As a new PT must first be found to continue a patient’s treatment, this means that PT burnout could lead to delays in treatment.

Burnout Can Cause Patients to Look for Different Clinics to Continue Treatments

It may sound unlikely but physical therapy clinics are suffering from reduced patient retention rates. According to a 2019 study by Rehab U Solutions, 14% of patients fail to attend their follow-up appointments, while 20-30% stop their treatments after their second appointment. More often than not, this is caused by the less-than-stellar care that patients receive when their provider is suffering from burnout.

When patients receive lackluster care, it’s more likely that they’ll look for a different clinic to continue their treatments. This can be a problem for patients who need immediate care or are experiencing transportation or financial difficulties as it consumes time and resources that could be dedicated to their treatments instead.

Patients Can Become Frustrated With Their PTs and Clinic

Finally, physical therapist burnout can cause patients to become frustrated with their PTs and clinics. Remember, patients trust PTs to help them recover from their ailments. Burnout can prevent their treatment from going as planned and as such, it can directly affect the patient’s relationship with their physical therapist and even the clinic itself. This in turn negatively influences the experience that the patient will have with their healthcare provider as a whole.

5 Ways to Reduce Physical Therapist Burnout

1. Offer Flexible Schedules

Physical therapists sometimes work more than 40 hours a week to ensure that their patients get the treatments they need. However, more often than not, this eats up the time that could be used to be with their families, do their hobbies, or even just rest and relax after a long day of work. The exhaustion and lack of time for themselves caused by these working hours contribute to the burnout PTs experience.

With that in mind, to avoid burnout among your PTs, consider implementing a flexible schedule for your team. This can be accomplished by looking into alternative working hours, such as four 10-hour days per week or even allowing them to perform at-home sessions with their patients. By doing so, they can rest more, recover their physical and mental health, and return to work fully recharged.

2. Help Your PTs Maintain a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Like any healthcare professional, physical therapists must maintain the perfect work-life balance to avoid burnout. Unfortunately, this isn’t always accomplished thanks to the long hours that PTs work. To that end, clinics should find a way to assist their PTs in maintaining a healthy work-life balance to avoid physical therapist burnout.

There are many ways in which work-life balance can be maintained for PTs. For instance, clinics can mandate that PTs leave their work for the next day. That way, PTs will have more time to focus on themselves and their personal interests after their shift without worrying about their work.

3. Give Your PTs Self-Care Opportunities

Another method clinics can utilize to prevent PT burnout is by allowing them to have self-care opportunities even while they’re at work.

Physical therapy is an exhausting line of work and PTs deserve rest and self-care like any working individual. Additionally, physical therapists might also experience secondhand trauma while treating their patient’s injuries or just hearing about troubles in their personal lives. As such, self-care is vital in combatting this trauma.

When using self-care to combat physical therapist burnout, mindfulness interventions such as yoga, meditation, and even journaling are effective methods to consider. By implementing these exercises, PTs can relax and rebuild their minds even when they’re on the job.

4. Implement New Technologies to Make The Job Easier

Administrative tasks, such as documentation, are essential aspects of physical therapy. Without it, keeping track of the patient’s treatment course would be difficult, which could hinder their recovery process. Unfortunately, however, tasks like documentation can eat up a lot of the PT’s working hours.

In a 2011 study published by the National Library of Medicine, it was found that PTs spend up to a maximum of two hours documenting patient sessions. This is time that could be used to treat patients instead and is often the cause of burnout for PTs. Thankfully, there are ways to alleviate the amount of time spent on documentation and that’s through the use of documentation tools.

With documentation tools, the amount of time used for documentation tasks can be cut in half. This is because such tools allow PTs to record sessions instantly, eliminating the need to write everything down. Additionally, documentation time can be cut even further if these tools are connected to an EMR system that allows PTs to immediately access patient records and other pertinent information.

Apart from using documentation tools, virtual front desk solutions can also aid in preventing PT burnout. By having a virtual receptionist, the check-in process for every appointment can run smoother, preventing any potential delays in each patient’s appointment.

5. Acknowledge The PT’s Efforts and Help Them Improve Their Skills

Finally, you can prevent your physical therapists from experiencing burnout by acknowledging their efforts to assist their patients and the clinic as a whole. Physical therapy can be grueling work and a PT might find themselves demoralized by exhaustion. With that in mind, consider acknowledging their efforts now and then.

To do this, you can consider rewards such as extra vacation days, a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant, or even pay raises and promotions. By knowing that their efforts will eventually be rewarded with extra rest or career advancement, a clinic can easily boost their physical therapy team’s morale. This can help prevent burnout in the process.

Apart from that, clinics can also offer mentorship opportunities to PTs to help improve their skills. In fact, as per a 2023 study by the Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions, mentorship opportunities can actually protect PTs from physical therapist burnout. This is because it creates a positive work and learning environment that physical therapists can look forward to. As a result, the chances of burnout are further decreased.

How Your Front Desk Can Help Your Physical Therapists

It may sound unlikely, but your front desk can help your physical therapist with their work. With added assistance from the front desk, the workload PTs experience can be lightened, especially regarding customer service. This can help them avoid burnout as a result. But how exactly can the front desk alleviate a PT’s workload?

Here are the various ways a clinic’s front desk can help protect PTs from burnout.

• Front Desk Receptionists Can Reduce Patient Stress – Some patients can feel stressed and nervous during physical therapy appointments. While this is understandable, it could make treating patients even more difficult for the PTs, further exhausting them to the point of burnout. Your front desk can put a halt to a patient’s stress and nervousness by simply being warm, welcoming, and reassuring to them. This can relax them for their appointments and make treating them easier on the PT.
• The Front Desk Can Conduct Administrative Tasks for PTs – There are times when administrative work falls on the PT’s shoulders. Unfortunately, this prevents them from spending more time treating their patients, which can result in physical therapist burnout. Rather than having your physical therapists conduct such duties, the clinic’s front desk can take on the administrative tasks of scheduling appointments, insurance verification, managing payments, or even responding to emails and phone calls to reduce the PT team’s workload.
• Front Desk Receptionists Can Collect Necessary Information Before the Appointment – Before every appointment, physical therapists need to prepare items such as the patient’s medical history, treatment plans, and other documents. Once again, this can put more work on the PT’s plate, resulting in them accumulating burnout-causing stress over time. Fortunately, this can easily be solved by setting up a workflow process between the PT and front desk staff. That way, the front desk can prepare the necessary documents in the PT’s stead before the patient arrives.

For a more in-depth look at the different ways the front desk can help physical therapists mitigate burnout, read this informative blog.

WelcomeWare: Your Assistant Against Physical Therapist Burnout

Physical therapist burnout is not a problem the healthcare industry can ignore. According to research, PT burnout costs the healthcare system $4.6 billion annually. In addition, it also causes a shortage of much-needed healthcare providers. With that in mind, your clinic needs all the help it can get to mitigate burnout.

WelcomeWare is a virtual receptionist service that can help your clinic reduce burnout. With WelcomeWare, physical therapists receive valuable assistance in various administrative tasks. This allows PTs to focus less on patient scheduling and insurance verification duties and more on treating their patients. Turn to WelcomeWare to provide some much-needed support to your physical therapists.