To support wellbeing through reduction of departmental email burden while maintaining effective communication of key events and opportunities.

Our academic neurology department includes >130 faculty in 15 divisions. Faculty shared increasing concerns about the quantity of departmental emails, including announcements for weekly division conferences, grand rounds, and trainee events.  Prior studies have shown administrative burden correlates negatively with career satisfaction and contributes to physician burnout (Sandhya et al 2017).  

Faculty advocated for a departmental administrative partner to assist with email streamlining, leading to the hire of an Internal Communications Associate (ICA).  A taskforce of six physicians outlined pain points in departmental email culture in partnership with the ICA. The task force considered multiple interventions, settling on a consolidated weekly email digest of the 25-30 weekly departmental emails. A pre-launch survey of  department faculty demonstrated >90%  in favor of this intervention. The ICA iteratively designed and launched a weekly email digest format incorporating suggestions from the task force. 

The weekly digest launched February 2023, consolidating an average of 24 previously separate emails (range 15-36) with an opening rate of 61%.  80% of faculty members (response rate 46%) were in favor of the digest when surveyed 2-months post-launch.  Our 2024 faculty wellbeing survey (response rate 67%) noted a significant decrease in burnout, increase in professional fulfillment, and improved satisfaction with organizational efficiency of practice compared to 2022.

As our digital world grows, proactive management and organization of our digital spaces can support physician wellbeing through decreasing overall digital burden and cognitive complexity.  This requires administrative investment and technical skills for successful implementation.  Our ICA estimates 8 hours of work each week toward digest creation.  This may be time well spent, as one faculty member noted, “Fewer emails is such a relief…keeps me organized to know where to look for everything!”