We focus on reducing and eliminating the technology and process factors that contribute to physician burnout - or moral injury. It occurred to me today that we can be more generous with our knowledge and potentially help more people by sharing some ideas about processes.

One of our software tools, DocLauncher, speeds up communication/information finding, and reduces stress and frustration. And although DocLauncher is built to this purpose and has features specific to doctors on the move, who need to find information quickly, you can get some of this benefit with a simple process change.

Part of what makes DocLauncher valuable is that some organizations embrace the tool and alter their information sharing processes. They designate someone on the team to be on the lookout for useful information and to capture and organize that information for the team. You could do this with DocLauncher, but you could also do this with a shared drive (like an internal shared network drive or an external file sharing service such as Box) or a wiki.

The result is that your team knows who the keeper of the information is. They soon start to pass along crucial information to that person to be organized and shared. And they soon learn that this information will be reliably captured and quickly found, it reduces the number of announcements and emails and updates that they have to review. This volume of email is what we mean when we talk about information noise. They are quickly able to filter a large number of emails into the - already taken care of bin - and focus on more important things. They can look up specific information when it’s relevant.

It seems like a minor thing, but few people have had the opportunity to step outside of the noise while they are still at work to understand the impact. The feedback that we have received is that the effects and the benefit are substantial and worthwhile.