Let’s get something out of the way: not every solution to physician burnout needs to involve AI, a digital front door, or a 47-slide PowerPoint titled “Operationalizing Wellness.” Sometimes, the biggest wins come from low-tech (or no-tech!) interventions that are painfully obvious once you stop pretending you need a capital request to fix them.
Burnout, at its core, isn’t about too much work. It’s about too much useless work, too little support, and too few moments where we’re all reminded that being a clinician still matters. This isn’t revolutionary insight; clinicians have been saying it for years. Yet somehow, the solutions still get filtered through layers of project charters and committees until they resemble the very thing they’re supposed to fix.
In that spirit, here are three pragmatic, decidedly unsexy ways to make your clinicians’ lives easier.
Prescriptions, not permission slips: The case for annual renewal
If you want a case study in administrative waste disguised as clinical oversight, look no further than the way we handle medication refills. Every clinician has been there: the inbox floods with refill requests for medications that haven’t changed for years. I’m thinking about anti-hypertensives, statins, or mood stabilizers. Refilling these medications is rarely a controversial clinical decision; it’s a bureaucratic ritual. This formality burns time, patience, and goodwill at scale.
According to the American Medical Association (AMA), moving to an annual prescription renewal model for stable, chronic medications can significantly reduce inbox volume, eliminate pharmacy call-backs, and make patients happier, all without compromising safety. The model is elegantly simple: instead of renewing medications every 30 or 90 days, authorize them for an entire year (actually, ideally 15 months) when clinically appropriate. Most modern electronic health records (EHRs) can already support this workflow, which means the barriers to implementation are largely cultural and procedural, not technical.
To be clear, this isn’t a blanket policy. It requires clinical judgment and coordination with pharmacy teams. But in pilot programs, the shift has led to measurable reductions in low-value workload and improved patient convenience. If your team is still reauthorizing rosuvastatin for patients who’ve had an unchanged lipid panel since 2019, it's time to stop blaming inbox volume on the EHR. The inefficiency isn't digital; it's institutional.
Recognition is not a line item: The power of feeling valued
Let’s pivot to the softer side of burnout: the emotional tax of not feeling valued. This is the part that gets dismissed as fluff yet turns out to be foundational. According to a recent article in BMJ Leader, perceived value – how much clinicians feel respected, recognized, and psychologically safe within their organizations – is directly tied to emotional exhaustion, engagement, and retention. In other words, people don’t leave jobs just because they’re busy. They leave when they’re busy and invisible.
Feeling valued isn’t a line item on a budget. It’s a function of leadership behavior. The research suggests that small, authentic, and consistent gestures like timely recognition, personal notes, and meaningful feedback can shift culture. And no, this doesn’t mean mandatory “shout-outs” at staff meetings or branded coffee mugs once a year. It means building a norm where people are seen and supported in real time, not retroactively and definitely not performatively.
This isn’t just about morale; it’s about operational integrity. A workforce that doesn’t feel valued is a workforce that disengages. When physicians stop speaking up, stop innovating, or stop mentoring others, the ripple effects go far beyond job satisfaction. They erode patient safety, clinical quality, and team cohesion. If your doctors and nurses are burning out and your only response is “we hear you,” followed by … nothing, then you’ve already lost credibility. Don’t think of appreciation as a perk; think of it as oxygen.
Mentorship is medicine: Build connections that actually heal
Speaking of team cohesion, let’s talk about mentorship. You’d think that after a few years of medical training, clinicians would feel confident and connected, but often, the opposite is true. Newer physicians report high levels of isolation, self-doubt, and uncertainty, especially in systems that prioritize productivity metrics over professional development. The myth that mentorship happens “organically” is just that: a myth. Left to chance, it often never materializes.
The AMA’s Steps Forward podcast episode on physician mentoring features hospitalist Keshni Ramnanan, MD, who makes a compelling case for mentoring as a vital part of reducing burnout. Mentoring, she explains, isn’t just about career guidance. It’s about belonging. It’s about having someone in your corner when everything feels chaotic, which is roughly every day in healthcare right now.
The good news is that mentoring doesn’t require a new line of software or an outside consultant. It requires intention, structure, and leadership support. Institutions that build formal mentorship programs or simply give people the time and encouragement to form their own, report improvements in morale, retention, and even clinical quality. It turns out that when physicians feel supported by their peers, they’re more likely to stick around, speak up, and stay engaged.
Final diagnosis: You don’t need tech to treat burnout
There’s a temptation in healthcare to chase big solutions. But while we’re busy demoing new platforms and talking interoperability, many of our physicians and nurses are quietly suffering from problems that are old, obvious, and most maddeningly fixable.
If you want to fight burnout meaningfully, you need not start with a vendor. Start by rethinking prescription refills, how and when you say thank you, and whether you're giving your clinicians someone to talk to who’s been there before. These aren’t bells and whistles. These are the basics. And if we can’t get the basics right, what makes us think we’re ready for anything more advanced?
We’re spending billions of dollars on digital health platforms, clinician-facing AI, and optimization. Most of those investments are worthwhile. But in the meantime, clinicians are quietly drowning in tasks that no longer serve patients, navigating systems that don’t value their time, and longing for the kind of professional relationships that used to make medicine feel like a calling.
If we can’t fix that with some simple changes like renewing prescriptions once a year, saying thank you like we mean it, and creating space for humans to connect with other humans, then we might need to reexamine what problem we think we’re solving. Because burnout isn’t just a tech problem or a scheduling problem. It’s a trust problem, a systems problem, and a leadership problem.