High levels of stress, burnout, absence from work and strikes affecting the health and care workforce are a symptom of the current state of health systems. These are normal reactions in the face of staff shortages, low pay, inadequate and unsafe working conditions, extraordinarily stressful environments and a lack of needed workplace safeguards. At least a quarter of health and care workers reported anxiety, depression and burnout symptoms between January 2020 and April 2022. No significant reductions have been observed since 2022.
Expanding upon knowledge to address this threat to health systems, the WHO Health Workforce department organized a 26 April technical consultation on Protecting health and care workers’ mental health and well-being in Leuven, Belgium. Health workers affected by burnout testified to their personal experiences, and experts exchanged evidence-based tools, research, guidelines, good practices and opportunities for alignment across existing national, regional and global initiatives.
Globally, health and care workers are raising their voices on how workplace demands and resource gaps are impacting their mental health and well-being. During the technical consultation, Corey Feist, Chief Executive Officer of the Dr Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, called to mind his sister-in-law Dr Lorna Breen, a New York City emergency room physician who died by suicide exactly at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The landmark 2022 Dr Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act in the United States supporting health workers’ mental health and well-being has funded $103 million across 44 organizations to implement evidence-informed strategies that reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders.
“Particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a moral obligation to address the long-standing crisis of burnout, exhaustion, and moral injury across the health sector by protecting decent work, improving the practice environment and tackling the root causes of mental health problems in our workforce,” stated Jim Campbell, WHO Health Workforce Director. Experts contributing to the consultation agreed that urgent collective action to address health system factors that lead to stress and burnout in the workforce is essential.
The technical consultation builds upon national policy actions like the Dr Lorna Breen Act, regional initiatives, cross-border studies that document evidence on the impact of organizational level change; and the Global health and care worker compact requested and approved by countries through the World Health Assembly. Application of these recommendations within health systems and with appropriate policy action remains a challenge in most countries
The expert consultation is part of a strategic partnership with the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) that focuses on operationalizing the recommendations of Our duty of care: a global call to action to protect the mental health of health and care workers. Demonstration sites have been launched at the health facility level in Spain and Qatar to apply evidence-based interventions and address organizational level changes to better protect and support health and care workers.