Workforce burnout has significantly increased among the United States health care professionals, negatively impacting clients served, and other health occupation disciplines. Even though workforce burnout has been an ever-present problem, the pandemic of racism and COVID-19 only increased this stress due to the burgeoning mental health crises and its impact on not only health care professionals but future health care professionals attending school globally. Workforce burnout paired with the affects of the pandemics has increased mental and behavioral health disorders such as self-harm, anxiety, depression, substance use, post traumatic stress disorder, intimate partner violence, possible psychoses, and suicides. People such as health care workers, minorities, low income communities, and people in substance recovery are experiencing some of the greatest severity of burnout and stress due to the pandemics. 

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Therefore, resiliency-focused efforts are a critical solution to this deep, on-going, and persistent problem of health occupation workforce burnout. In general, evidence informed preventative and interventive approaches to promote provider resiliency and prevent or reduce clinical burnout are typically divided into individual (student or professional/practitioner) and organizational level strategies (leadership roles) because the drivers of workforce burnout vary. 

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Individual approaches to address burnout include training future workforce (Students) and current workforce (health care professionals) on evidence based self-care strategies such as eating, sleeping, exercising, mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, stress management, effective communication, and mental health. Whereas, organization-level strategies use train the trainer models that include strategies for changing organizational structure such as creating and manifesting a culture of wellness as part of the workplace climate, provision of wellness programs, adding self-care/wellness committees, and providing free access to the individual level trainings or supportive therapy for their workplace. 

 

The HOPE-WWR grant program aims to decrease the stigma of mental health within the workplace, as well as increasing our awareness to the need for wellness and self-care throughout healthcare systems. Using the evidence-based toolkit and prevention/intervention strategies to educate future, current, and organizational health care workers to understand their burnout and adequately cope with it.