Ep. 2 — Are You Paying Attention?: How We Can Use Our Focus to Reduce Cognitive Load in Support of Well-Being | Johns Hopkins Office of Well-Being

Posted on Posted in Vital Conversations: Influencing Workplace Well-Being in Health Care | Johns Hopkins Medicine

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Has the complexity of our work in health care outpaced our brain’s ability to keep up? Liz Harry, Chief Well-Being Officer at Michigan Medicine, discusses the connection between cognitive load and burnout, and introduces the concept of the attention economy. Dr. Harry shares strategies for leveraging technology while supporting our well-being, as well as some personal tips for protecting what has become a scarce resource — our focused attention. To learn more visit https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/office-of-well-being/podcast

Key Takeaways:

  1. Solving for burnout at the organizational level can feel overwhelming. Let’s not go it alone. We can learn from each other within health care and also from disciplines outside of health care. We need not only an individual growth mindset, but a collective growth mindset across health care.
  2. We now live in an attention economy — our attention is a scarce and valuable resource. We need to be intentional about where we choose to place our focused energy.
  3. As we lean into the power of AI, it’s important to consider how the technology is contributing to our well-being. Is AI reducing the number of clicks, steps or human interactions needed to complete a given task? In doing so, is it freeing up cognitive bandwidth for complex medical decision-making?

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