To make progress against knotty problems, break them down — dissect the causes and analyze their impact on different groups. That analysis inevitably leads away from dubious “magic bullet” solutions and toward multiple, targeted interventions that are more likely to be effective. The measures and data to perform this type of analysis are now becoming available for burnout, a problem that is growing in all sectors, but is particularly challenging in health care.
Helping Health Care Workers Avoid Burnout
To better understand the sources of burnout and resilience against it, researchers analyzed data for two characteristics associated with burnout for more than 80,000 health care personnel from 40 healthcare systems nationwide (approximately 19,000 nurses, 5,000 physicians and 60,000 non-nurse/MD personnel). The first of these characteristics, “activation,” is the extent to which a person is motivated by his or her work and feels it is meaningful. The second, “decompression,” is the degree to which one can withdraw, recharge and enjoy life outside of work. Each of these groups will benefit from different types of interventions to enhance activation and decompression. In particular, leadership should focus on “activating” the vast non-nurse, non-physician workforce in healthcare, helping the legions of people who keep the whole system running just how important their work is.