How to address burnout in healthcare workers
I’ve had the opportunity to work with many healthcare organizations in the private and public sectors. In this article, you’ll learn the challenges healthcare workers face, including primary care physicians, surgeons, nurses, intake workers, mental health professionals, and healthcare human resources professionals.
Burnout & stress factors facing frontline workers.
The original feedback from frontline workers came through workshops and training facilitated by several universities’ faculty of medicine, specialized conferences, hospitals, long-term care facilities and critical care teams. As we walked through the causes of burnout, compassion fatigue and moral injury, these are some of the challenges healthcare workers identified as primary challenges.
Workload challenges
Staff shortages, with support staff and nursing shortages in particular.
Additional caseload and items added to the workload, requiring much more time and effort.
An increase in client needs, often due to a lack of resources, requires a higher degree of innovation.
Policy implementations require an increased demand for documentation.
A lack of resources caused healthcare workers to improvise due to long-term service waitlists.
Returning to normal with the backlog brought upon by the pandemic over the past three years.
Control challenges
An inability to set one’s schedule or losing autonomy over one’s schedule.
Attempting to balance the backlog of work with emergent issues.
Unfair perceptions from families that do not match ministry or facility requirements.
The lack of transparency from management paired with constant change.
Feeling anxiety about things I cannot control, nor are they my responsibility to control.
Experiencing the shame of being burnt out due to unhelpful stigmas.
Reward challenges
Longer working hours that extend into evenings, weekends and atypical shifts.
A lack of overtime compensation.
A lack of comprehensive benefits to cover increased expenses for self-care and mental health support.
Feeling unappreciated by team members, management, and patients.
Inflation and the increased cost of living leave many helping professionals living pay cheque to pay cheque.
Benefit package levels are insufficient despite the increasing cost of services.
Unfair compensation as some staff members receive wage enhancements while others do not.
Connection challenges
A lack of in-person connection with patients and co-workers.
A critical lack of debriefing and support from managers and supervisors following difficult experiences and vicarious trauma.
Lack of collaboration and creativity to problem-solve among team members.
Higher staff turnover means losing long-term team members and onboarding new staff with insufficient training and team building.
Fewer opportunities for holiday celebrations.
Working as a team, but feeling alone and isolated.
Fairness challenges
Constantly changing directives and protocols.
Continued personal protective measures long after the rest of society stopped taking precautions.
A lack of mentorship from seasoned staff and supervisors due to a lack of time and resources.
Inauthentic messaging from higher management regarding worker care, but without behaviours to back it up.
Fewer opportunities for training and lunch and learns.
Ageism, gender inequality, and racism lead to microaggressions and a lack of growth and development opportunities.
Values challenges
An inability to provide high-quality care and referrals due to a lack of resources causes patients to survive rather than thrive.
Documentation that seems to come first before actual client care.
A lack of work-life balance due to increased work responsibilities and reduced compensation.
An unanswered desire for critical incident debriefs after emotionally-charged emergency situations.
Experiencing stress as a baseline due to supporting clients within systemic inequalities.
A feeling of hopelessness and grief without sufficient time to internally process.
Giving so much of oneself to work that there is insufficient time or energy for family, social life and self-care.
What can be done to support healthcare workers?
Frontline staff, as well as upper management, require strategies to prevent and overcome workplace stress, burnout and compassion fatigue. The following are a few recommendations to get you started.
Complete an organizational culture evaluation.
Evaluate company culture factors, including workload, autonomy, employee satisfaction, workplace community, fairness and organizational values. Follow up with workshop sessions that invite staff to collaboratively create solutions.
Address high workloads.
Engage employees to learn how they would like their workload challenges to be addressed. You’d be surprised how often people know the answers to their problems but lack autonomy for innovation.
Encourage autonomy.
While not all areas of work can be controlled, offering employees simple options that empower personal autonomy goes a long way toward workplace satisfaction. Helping staff feel in control of even small parts of their job builds confidence and enthusiasm.
Communicate gratitude authentically.
Employees need to hear that they are appreciated. Even when they lack control over responsibilities, expressing thanks publicly often raises morale. Additionally, make sure that written and spoken values are lived out in real-life situations and promoted through recognition.
Reestablish team building and growth opportunities.
Get creative with team building through social events and team training by encouraging professional development learning to improve employee self-efficacy and collaboration. Offer workshops and lunch and learns that do not interfere with workplace responsibilities.
Evaluate employee burnout risk.
Use the free Burnout Assessment to assess employee risk. It is available online or digitally as a service. Download it today or contact us to learn more.
Train effective debriefing skills
Provide managers. supervisors and team leaders - anyone in a leadership position - training on how to facilitate critical incident stress debriefs. By training all leadership levels to understand how debriefs work and providing a consistent outline to follow, staff that experience stressful events feel heard and cared for.
About the author
Bonita Eby is a Burnout Prevention & Organizational Culture Consultant, Executive Coach, and owner of Breakthrough Personal & Professional Development Inc., specializing in burnout prevention and wellness for organizations and individuals. Bonita is on a mission to end burnout. Get your free Burnout Assessment today.