Making self-care a priority is essential when you work in a healthcare setting. Day in and day out, you spend a large portion of your day caring for the well-being of your patients, but over time, it can take a personal toll. The last several years have brought even more challenges for healthcare providers across the country as more people are going through difficulties and reaching out for help. 

Cultivating the patient-provider connection is essential to delivering an exceptional patient engagement experience at your pediatric practice. It’s up to you to reimagine what the future of medicine looks like.

Parents, researchers, pediatricians, and front-line mental health providers are all saying the same thing: there is an ongoing mental health crisis among youth in America. Taking action to mitigate these challenges is essential. However, it can be hard to know where to start without the appropriate data.

One common thread that comes up often in conversations among pediatric providers and their staff is that the last several years have been exhausting. Pediatricians in cities, suburbs, and rural areas alike are burned out and they’re facing what seems like an insurmountable combination of increased expectations and decreased practice resources.

While Medicaid has been used as a way to provide healthcare services to Americans for decades, individuals within the healthcare system, including pediatric providers, do not fully understand it.

Since early 2020, many pediatric practices have been forced to juggle increased patient demand against new safety precautions and a reduction in the number of people they have on staff. The COVID pandemic has been a significant stressor on the pediatric community, with one survey finding that 60% of pediatricians were experiencing at least one dimension of burnout.

Learning to communicate with patients online has been a central hallmark of the COVID-19 pandemic for pediatric practices. However, evaluating whether your practice is succeeding in this area can be a challenge. The scope of communication in healthcare varies, and there’s no one standard metric that providers can use to measure their progress.

Many young children and teens struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, organizations like Duck Cup Memorial Fund are stepping into the fray to bring more awareness to this issue. Sara Jutz, the Executive Director of Duck Cup Memorial Fund, recently spoke on the PediaTricks podcast to share more information about how their organization is working to meet this moment, and make mental health and suicide prevention a much easier subject to speak about openly. 

Social media can be polarizing, but there are many benefits that can be gained from using it as a patient engagement tool in your practice. Having open lines of communication with patients and their families is an important step for practice success, and social media can play a significant role in making this happen.

For many parents, raising kids that have a healthy relationship with social media can be a challenge. Why? Because social media is ubiquitous.