What will it take to end health care worker burnout?

Long hours and high-pressure situations have long characterized the health care profession —  but in the wake of the pandemic, many workers are facing new challenges with regards to their mental health.

Health care workers are facing a mental health crisis, struggling with burnout, anxiety, and depression, according to a Centers of Disease Control and Prevention report published Tuesday. Researchers compared survey data from 2018 and 2022, finding that health workers experienced poorer mental health outcomes post-pandemic. Of those surveyed, 46% of health workers reported feeling burnout often or very often in 2022, compared to 32% in 2018.

Health care workers “were really asked to do superhuman work during the pandemic. There was a price to pay for those demands,” said L. Casey Chosewood, one of the report authors and director of the Office for Total Worker Health at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He noted that many dealt with understaffing amid long hours and a shortage of personal protective equipment. “So, unfortunately we see high levels of burnout and we see lots of evidence of workers who plan to leave the profession because of these tough working conditions.”

Others may plan to stay in the profession but switch jobs. Nearly half of the 325 health workers surveyed in 2022 reported being somewhat likely or very likely to look for a new job in a profession where employers are already straining to keep staffers.

Some hospitals and health systems are trying to retain workers with salary increases, sign-on bonuses, and expanded benefits. But experts told STAT that it’s less common to focus on mental health practices.

Often, the responsibility falls on individual health care workers to recognize and manage their own stress, burnout, or depression, with few resources to get the help and support they truly need. But CDC data showed a decrease in the likelihood of burnout if health workers said they had enough time to do their work, received help from supervisors, and trusted management.

Health care workers who said their organizations did not have sufficient staff also had 2.73 times the odds of reporting burnout compared to those not dealing with shortages.

Unfortunately, those conditions aren’t available to many. “In our interviews with health workers, they are saying they still do not have what they need,” said Chosewood. “We’re asking organizations to take a different approach, move upstream to the prevention side and actually change the system itself.”

The key to changing the culture in a health care setting is to listen to workers, said Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist and director of Wellness Programs at NYU Langone. “The leadership of the organization should be asking themselves: ‘Can we kind of understand if our employees are happy? Are they struggling? Are they overworked? Do they feel overburdened?’”

Management should also work to eradicate the stigma around seeking care for the mental health struggles. “Let’s normalize help-seeking. Let’s have a culture that says it’s OK if you need help. These are messages that leaders can model; they can share these and build that climate and culture that’s very supportive of their workers,” said Chosewood.

In addition to increasing staffing, reducing workload, and creating a help-seeking culture, organizations can also offer mental health resources. “One of the things I talk to a lot of leaders about is doing check-ins for mental health, encouraging people to take their time off, encouraging people to utilize institutional resources, and even bringing in mental health professionals to provide talks on burnout,” said Gallagher, who spearheads support group sessions and connects workers to digital mental health resources at NYU Langone.

The CDC itself has instituted burnout prevention training for workers in addition to developing an employee health and well-being advisory committee that seeks to listen to the needs of workers to create system-level interventions, said Chosewood. Other resources organizations can provide include digital mental health apps, counseling sessions, and peer support programs, Gallagher noted.

At the end of the day, health workers have the power to hold their institutions accountable to foster a supportive environment, said Chosewood.

“Today, many health workers are in professions that are in high demand, so if organizations are not supportive, if they’re not offering better-quality working conditions, many of these workers have a choice to go somewhere else and seek employment,” he said. “Turnover is expensive for organizations, and it impacts the quality of the care that can be provided by an organization. So it’s in their best interest to prioritize the well-being of their workers if they want to have high quality patient care and a successful bottom line.”