How to fight sick care technofatigue

Technofatigue is that weariness you feel when you spend a long time dealing with technical problems at the expense of actually doing your job. In the case of sick care professionals, technofatigue is a major source of job stress and burnout and is often attributed to electronic medical records.

Will Siri actually help you be more productive or waste more time creating emojis?

Are you exhausted after chatting with ChatGPT? Are you suffering from AInxiety?

It should not be confused, but is often a part of or compounded, by change fatigue. Then there is innovation fatigue.

Alarm fatigue completes the terrible techno fatigue quadric.

Call it the "shiny new object " syndrome.

“More businesses die from indigestion than starvation.”

That’s what Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard warned in 1995 about the danger of company leaders who add too much to their workplaces and subtract too little.

His words ring even more true now than they did 27 years ago, with too many leaders programmed and rewarded for more, more, more. It isn’t that addition is inherently bad. But when leaders are undisciplined about piling on staff, gizmos, software, meetings, rules, training and management fads, organizations become too complicated, their people get overwhelmed and exhausted, and their resources are spread so thin that all their work suffers.

Fighting techno/innovation/change fatigue is a challenge. But we live in an increasingly digital world, so simply ignoring modern technologies, particularly health information technologies, is not a practical approach. Then, what are some ways doctors can fight techno fatigue and its destructive effects, recognizing the limitations of the Luddite strategy?

1. The Goldilocks approach. Get rid of technology overload, pruning, when possible, those apps or services that don't improve efficiency or add value. Accept those that do, but in moderation. You should strive for just the right balance.
2. Get involved in fixing things. We all accept that the present EMRs are SHIT. Creating the future IT whole product solution, however, will require more and more end-user input in design, development and deployment and will take several iterations for us to get it right.
3. Avoid shiny new objects. Stay in touch with the hype cycle. For most doctors, this is not your first rodeo when it comes to technology adoption and penetration.
4. Embrace frugal innovation and feature fatigue. It's the benefits, stupid.
5. Demand accountability from those who are trying to ram technology down your throat for the wrong reasons.
6. Practice a personal stress reduction and burnout plan.
7. PISS on burnout and the technofatigue that contributes to it.
8. Lobby to get paid for non-value added technoadministrivia. Just say no to people who want to pile on things to already overloaded practitioners. Unbundle primary care.
9. Find a better non-technical solution to your problem. Get rid of garbage instead of digitizing it. Get rid of waste.
10. Eliminate or minimize WIFI zones. I recently had lunch in a mountain town restaurant that had no WIFI and a sign that proclaimed, "Pretend it's 1985. Talk to someone"

These are many "shiny new object" applications. However, EMRs seemed like a good idea at the time and look where we wound up. At this point, doctors are suffering from technofatigue and unless and until we can demonstrate IT technologies that will make their life easier and make more money for them in less time, there will be significant resistance to dissemination and implementation.

So, technologists and digipreneurs need to demonstrate value and significant benefits to 1) patient defined value, 2) results that help to achieve business objectives in a value based world and 3) make sick care workers more productive.

Technofatigue is rampant and exacting a big toll on the sick care workforce. Make reducing it one of your resolutions. Here is an app to help monitor your progress.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Twitter@SoPEOfficial and Co-editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship

Updated 4/2023