Nurses, the healthcare team, and Burnout
What is burnout?
Merriam-Webster defines burnout as "exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration." Google's dictionary gives a sobering example: "high levels of professionalism that may result in burnout."
How common is burnout among nurses?
Unsurprisingly, nurse burnout rates are even higher than reported for physicians - as much as 62% according to one ANA resources article from 2024.
It's not surprising - nurses deal with direct patient care even more than physicians, and regularly take on some of the most physically and emotionally demanding tasks there are. This work frequently goes under-appreciated.
Wherever there is data on healthcare providers of any stripe on burnout, there are high levels of burnout observed.
Improving our job satisfaction and career longevity means addressing burnout not just for physicians and nurses, but for the whole healthcare team.
How bad can it get?
There were 729 nurse suicides between 2017 and 2018 ( Lee KA, Friese CR. Deaths by Suicide Among Nurses: A Rapid Response Call. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services. 2021;59(8):3-4. doi:10.3928/02793695-20210625-01 ).
Depression, divorce, and substance abuse are common. Perhaps even more common - and mostly unmeasured - is the number of people who are "getting by." No crisis yet, but unhappy in their job, experiencing dissatisfaction, and not sure what to do, or ways in which they can make a change.
What causes burnout?
Not surprisingly, nurses have different causes of burnout than physicians.
Nurses commonly cite a multitude of factors, including excessive workloads, inadequate staffing, emotional strain from patient care, and a stressful work environment. Other contributing factors include lack of support, lack of autonomy, and difficulty maintaining work-life balance. (ChatGPT, accessed 4/28/2025).
How can we address the problem?
Angels of Hippocrates has noted that burnout may be a personal issue, but it's mostly due to workplace problems. That's why our programs take a three-pronged approach. Our latest program Olakino: Change as a Practice includes both personal wellness and workplace wellness tracks.
But Olakino goes further. We've been refining our wellness strategies, but we've also encountered institutional inertia as we try to make the change we need to thrive in our workplace. So this year we're focusing on change as a process, and finding ways to apply concepts like resilience as we work to overcome institutional roadblocks. Change takes time and can be difficult. But the better we can understand the process of change - the parts we can control and the parts we can't - the better we can manage the stresses of it.
Resilience and Workplace Wellness
What do you mean when you say 'personal wellness'?
Personal wellness can accompany a variety of philosophical frameworks, modalities, and evidence-based behavioral interventions. The common element in the Happy Doc curriculum is that personal wellness is about helping the person adapt to the stresses of their environment.
So then what is 'workplace wellness'?
Workplace wellness is finding ways in which we can adapt the workplace to be more hospitable to those who inhabit it. Physicians list job dissatisfaction as their main contributor to burnout, and identify many specific factors leading to it. However, when the Medscape survey asked practitioners how to to address burnout, the #1 response was "increased pay," though pay dissatisfaction ranked low as a cause of burnout. This disconnect seems to imply that physicians do not feel empowered to change their environment, despite being able to articulate that the environment is a source of burnout and stress.
But isn't that 'resilience'? And isn't resilience good?
Resilience is defined as: 1. the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; 2. an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. Resilience is an excellent quality. But the second definition overlooks something the first does not - in order to experience resiliency the stress must end.
So how do we end the stress? It is even realistic?
There are doubtless things that might be easy to change personally, and battles that seem not worth fighting. However, focusing only on changing the individual without any attention toward changing the workplace may increase feelings of burnout, powerlessness, and frustration. For this reason, Angels of Hippocrates has included a Workplace Wellness Track.
What gets covered in a Workplace Wellness Track?
We start with identifying systems and institutional issues that contribute to burnout and frustration. Next, we examine interpersonal skills and relationships and examine workplace initiatives to support personal wellness. Ultimately, armed with new tools we will help people create workplace action plans in which they identify goals for change in their own workplace and begin to develop solutions.
An Adult Curriculum for Adult Learners
Our curriculum is designed for adult learners. There are no requirements. We are happy to talk with you, but in the end you choose the path that gives you the knowledge you need to solve the problems you face. If you want to experience the ropes course or the climbing wall or play volleyball, it's because these things make you happy - not because it's some team-building exercise. Choose as much or as little as you need, but have fun doing it. Having fun, getting information that's useful to you, and coming up with your own plan - that's what Angels of Hippocrates and our programs are all about.