If you want to improve the conditions of health workers, you need to give their bosses tools for change: At least that’s the approach a new federal initiative is taking to stem burnout among doctors and nurses.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has launched its first federal campaign, called Impact Wellbeing, to improve the mental health of those working in hospitals. The campaign focuses on immediate solutions that facility leaders can implement for their workforce.

“There was a lack of trust between management and the health care worker,” NIOSH’s director, Dr. John Howard, told Future Pulse of the pre-pandemic state of affairs for many health workers. “And there were no real proactive steps that your employer was taking for your psychological health — then [Covid] just exacerbated this long-standing problem.”

What’s involved? One of the first steps for leaders looking to improve the well-being of health workers, Howard said, is to engage them. The group surveys health workers to better understand their concerns and learn which areas need improvement.

Another piece of the initiative, led by the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, is to ensure health workers can speak up about their mental health concerns — and get treatment for them — without fear of retribution.

Health workers have long been concerned about professional consequences for being diagnosed or treated for mental illnesses, often exacerbating burnout in the profession.

“There are penalties or, at a minimum, structural stigma exists for health care workers getting the same mental health treatment that they prescribed to their patients,” foundation president and co-founder Corey Feist said. “You’ve created this toxic cocktail which not only is bad for the clinical team but is horrible for the patients.”

Lighten the load: Howard and Feist each pointed to the need to lessen the administrative burden on health workers, which is a factor in prompting them to quit.

They added that health workers must be trusted to play a bigger role in the decisions made in any system and to help shape the larger environment to promote patient and worker well-being.

“It literally increases capacity,” Feist said of some solutions presented to facilities. “The effort is low, and the impact is incredibly high.”

This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care.

Kratom, an herb extracted from a Southeast Asian plant that gives users a pleasant buzz, is taking hold in the U.S in the absence of federal regulations, despite its addictive, opioid-like properties, Bloomberg reports. It’s often sold in a beverage alongside drinks made with kava, another plant that doesn’t have the same addictive properties.

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Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Kelly Hooper talks with Evan about a dramatic change in House Republican support for an initiative by former President Donald Trump to commit millions in funding toward ending AIDS.

The Biden administration has a new strategy for closing research gaps in women’s health, including how to better manage and treat conditions like endometriosis, menopause, heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

What’s the plan? President Joe Biden has tasked federal agencies with delivering recommendations within 45 days, POLITICO’s Kelly Hooper reports.

Leading the effort is Dr. Carolyn Mazure — a clinician and the founder and director of the Women’s Health Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine — with the support of Jennifer Klein, assistant to the president and the director of the White House Gender Policy Council.

Why it matters: “Research on women’s health has been underfunded for decades,” first lady Jill Biden said on a call with reporters. “And many conditions that mostly or only affect women, or affect women differently, have received little to no attention.”

What’s next? The White House plans to engage the private sector and philanthropic groups to “explore new public-private partnerships and help maximize investments in women’s health research,” Klein said.

Telemedicine providers spend more of their time working on electronic health records than doctors who see patients in person, a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests.

The study examined the weekly EHR usage of doctors at UCSF Health in California from August 2020 to September 2021.

The researchers modeled the association between time spent practicing telemedicine and EHR use and found the connection.

Takeaway: Practicing telemedicine was associated with more time writing clinical notes and otherwise documenting patient visits than in-person visits.

However, the research was done at a single center using just one kind of EHR system, so outcomes may differ in another setting.

Why it matters: Telemedicine, which took off during the pandemic, is often touted as a way to make patient visits more efficient.

But studies have found that doctors spend large parts of their workdays completing tasks on EHRs — and they don’t like it.

What’s next? Many doctors see promise in AI as a way to help ease administrative work burdens, freeing time to spend with patients.

The study authors said as the use of telemedicine continues to grow, health systems and policymakers might need to reassess productivity expectations and reimbursement policies and consider trade-offs between doctor time and patient access.