Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1546083
20 CHRO Healthcare burnout looks different now — 5 leaders explain what's driving it By Paige Twenter W hen the COVID-19 pandemic receded, clinical workers expected three things: sustained recognition for what they had endured, a period of respite and a return to some version of normalcy. Most got none of them. Instead, they returned to waiting rooms full of patients who had deferred care for years and walked into a new kind of burnout. "ere were a lot of patients waiting to come to the healthcare system," said David Marcozzi, MD, chief clinical officer of Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical Center and associate dean of clinical affairs at University of Maryland School of Medicine. "You really weren't the hero that the public had originally thought you were — and I still consider everyone who came to work a hero. You couldn't really step away. ere was more work to do." Years later, the burnout has not disappeared. New AI capabilities have chipped away at documentation burden, but workforce burnout has changed shape, and that shi has made it harder to address. Five leaders — a chief clinical officer, a chief nurse executive, a chief quality officer and two well-being leaders — described to Becker's a clinical workforce navigating a new kind of strain: one without a common enemy or a clear end. From a single cause to many e defining feature of COVID-19 pandemic-era burnout, several executives said, was that it had a focus. Workers knew what they were battling, and they believed there would be an end. "In COVID, there was a common cause to save people's lives, and it was really easy to have that motivation," said Mary Beth Lardizabal, DO, vice president of mental health and addiction and system medical director of provider well-being at Minneapolis-based Allina Health. "Plus, we had the belief that there would be a cure, there would be an end. Burnout is not like that now." What clinicians face today is harder to name. Financial pressure, staffing constraints, regulatory burden, patient volume and institutional uncertainty are all compounding at once. "ere's stressors coming from so many different angles versus just one," said Heidi Woodland-Leine, PsyD, manager of provider well- being at Allina Health. at pressure has specific clinical and legal consequences. When financial constraints force institutions to cut services or change how care is delivered, clinicians experience what Dr. Lardizabal called moral distress — a term she was deliberate about. "In the COVID pandemic everybody was kind of using all resources available, and now there are less and less resources," she said. "Clinicians are being asked to do things differently in a way that might not be how they were trained or what they would think is the best possible care, simply because those resources or finances are not available… Some people call it moral injury, but I think the term moral distress captures it." Dr. Marcozzi framed the same pressure from a systems perspective. As healthcare expenditures approach 18% to 19% of the nation's gross domestic product, the burden falls on clinicians: Do more with less. Image Credit: Adobe Stock