As employee burnout continues to intensify throughout the country, nowhere else is it more severely experienced than in the health care industry.
From overworked nursing staff to overly strained cafeteria employees, health care workers are tasked with juggling multiple roles to accommodate systemic deficiencies that leave them feeling stressed, under-appreciated, and depleted. A certain amount of turnover is to be expected in this work environment, but across the country, hospitals have been seeing health care staff reshuffling or leaving in droves.
Between 2019 and 2021, turnover grew by 34% among health care workers, and as we transition out of the pandemic, they're either leaving unmanageable work environments or renouncing their professions altogether.
As such, describing this phenomenon as “burnout” doesn’t do justice to the structural shortcomings at play within hospitals and organizations. Feeling stressed or burned out is, unfortunately, the new normal among employees across industries, particularly health care, and it no longer makes sense to call it a passing fad stemming from pandemic-related stressors.
Burnout has officially evolved into a systemic crisis that wellness benefits like health insurance or a gym stipend can’t solely reverse.