Dr. Bryan Sexton and Wellbeing Research for Healthcare Workers

In today’s episode, Marcus chats to Bryan Sexton, PhD about conducting wellbeing research for healthcare workers, measuring rates of burnout, and interventions to help alleviate burnout. 

He shares how patient safety starts with the wellbeing of healthcare workers, highlighting that patient safety improves if caregivers are well taken care of, happy, and engaged. Delving into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers, Bryan also shines a light on the prevalence of exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and lack of engagement in healthcare. 

Bryan also discusses his love of yoga and meditation and upcoming healthcare innovations that make him hopeful for the future.

Key Moments:

• 00:00 – Introductions
• 01:01 – Bryan Sexton, PhD, introduces himself and talks a little about his career and career path.
• 04:46 – Bryan is asked about the development of staff wellbeing in healthcare. And his research that he is doing at Duke to help staff.
• 08:40 – The two talk about some of the practices that Bryan uses to help re-energize the self.
• 15:20 – Marcus starts asking his rapid-fire questions.
• 20:20 – Bryan talks about what he is excited for in healthcare. He would like to leave us with, “It’s going to be okay. Because science is going to fix all this.”
• 23:40 – Thank yous and goodbyes!

Resources for you: 

• More communication tips and resources for how to cultivate compassion: https://marcusengel.com/freeresources/
• Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusengel/
• Connect with Bryan Sexton, PhD, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wellb/
• Learn more about the Duke Center for Healthcare Safety & Quality: https://hsq.dukehealth.org
• Learn more about the resources Dr. Sexton references in this episode: https://caws.dukehealth.org/toolkit-on-demand/
• Subscribe to our podcast through Apple: https://bit.ly/MarcusEngelPodcast
• Subscribe to our podcast through YouTube: https://bit.ly/Youtube-MarcusEngelPodcast

More About Bryan Sexton, PhD

Bryan is the Director of the Duke Center for Healthcare Safety and Quality.  He leads the efforts around research and training that guide our quality improvement and well-being activities.  A psychologist member of the Department of Psychiatry, Bryan is a psychometrician and spends time developing methods of assessing and improving safety culture, teamwork, leadership and especially work-force well-being.  Currently, he is disseminating the results from a successful NIH R01 grant, using RCTs to demonstrate that we can cause well-being to improve in healthcare workers.

A ridiculously proud father of 4, he enjoys running, using hand tools on wood, listening to books on Audible, and over-reacting to a friendly game of Wahoo with his family.

For more information on Dr. Sexton’s research, check out his Scholars@Duke profile.

Date: 2/12/2024 Name of show: Compassion & Courage: Conversations in Healthcare Episode number and title: Episode 137 - Bryan Sexton, PhD, and Wellbeing Research for Healthcare Workers