CDC outlines six steps hospitals can take to address burnout
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Key takeaways:
- The CDC created a six-step guide to improve professional wellbeing among healthcare workforces at hospitals.
- Nearly half of all health care workers reported feeling burned out in 2022.
The CDC published a guide that hospitals can use to reduce the risk for burnout among health care staff.
Burnout has long been an issue among health care workers in the United States. In 2022, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA, said addressing burnout “must be a top national priority,” noting that the COVID-19 pandemic pushed health care workers “past their breaking point.”
The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) launched the Impact Wellbeing Campaign in October 2023 to improve health care worker mental health after a Vital Signs report showed that the number of health care workers reporting harassment doubled from 2018 to 2022, and that nearly half of all health workers reported they often felt burned out.
“We know hospital leaders have a lot of competing demands, and it can be overwhelming to know where to start when working to improve professional well-being,” Stefanie Simmons, MD, chief medical officer at the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, said in a press release.
“The guide provides hospital leaders across the country the tools for putting together a more cohesive well-being strategy, allowing them to take stock of where they are now, highlighting some of the missing pieces and taking action to get to where they want to be,” she said.
The guide outlines six steps that the CDC has pilot tested and refined with a working group of six hospitals. The six steps, as summarized by the CDC, are:
- Conduct a review of your hospital’s operations to determine how they support professional wellbeing.
- Build a dedicated team to support professional wellbeing at your hospital.
- Remove barriers to seeking care, such as intrusive mental health questions on credentialing applications.
- Develop a suite of communication tools that help you share updates with your workforce about your hospital’s journey to improve professional wellbeing.
- Integrate professional wellbeing measures into an ongoing quality improvement project.
- Create a 12-month plan to continue to move your hospital’s professional wellbeing work forward.
The CDC said it plans to host a webinar series in late April to help participating hospitals integrate the guide into their operations immediately.
“The role of health care workers in taking care of all of us is absolutely vital to our society, to our economy and to our culture,” NIOSH director John Howard, MD, said in the release. “But our health care workforce needs to feel supported, too.”
References:
- CDC. CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Impact Wellbeing Campaign releases hospital-tested guide to improve health care worker burnout. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0318-Worker-Burnout.html. Published March 18, 2024. Accessed March 18, 2024.
- CDC. Vital Signs: Health workers face a mental health crisis. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/health-worker-mental-health/index.html. Updated Oct. 24, 2023. Accessed March 18, 2024.
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