The Threat of Burnout Keeps Climbing in Urgent Care—and Not Just Among the Clinical Team

It’s been well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on clinicians, to the point that burnout is affecting more physicians, nurses, and advanced practice providers than ever. A viewpoint piece just published by the Journal of the American Medical Association draws back the curtain on another portion of your workforce whose own stresses over the past couple of years. Considering increased turnover among all healthcare workers between April and December 2020 and drawing on publications from the U.S. Surgeon General’s office and the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaboration on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience, the article suggests that “the coronavirus pandemic has underscored the need to attend to the wellbeing of the entire healthcare workforce, including nursing assistants, transport personnel, clerical staff, and others.” Possible solutions and preventive measures identified in the article start with simply recognized the potential for burnout and being willing to act but also include instituting self-reporting procedures in the workplace, considering whether it’s necessary to create new workflows to prevent excessive workloads, and compensation levels. Some of the recommendations laid out in Recognizing and Preventing Provider Burnout in Urgent Care, available in the JUCM archives, may be helpful in considering the state of your nonprovider personnel, as well.