HosTalky's Discussion Panel on Mental Health and Burnout: A Summary
Mental health issues and burnout are highly prevalent in the healthcare industry, but addressing the problems isn’t as widespread. Frontline healthcare professionals continue to work through the pandemic with strenuous workloads, tough patient interactions, and a lack of proper support from management/organizations. On top of work lives, these clinicians and practitioners have to manage and balance their personal lives as well. Some days are easier than others but it is definitely no easy feat to even get through one day of being a healthcare worker.
Last month, HosTalky hosted a panel with three healthcare professionals Thu Nguyen, Fallon A. Lopez BSN, RN, CHWC , and Bérénice Estiverne to chat about their experiences in the fast-paced industry we know as healthcare.
If you missed it, don’t worry! We have a recording ready for you to watch on demand. https://www.dhirubhai.net/video/eventurn:li:ugcPost:6958453720615448576/??
If you want a quick synopsis, read on to learn about mental health and burnout for healthcare professionals.
How do you define burnout and mental health??
Fallon defines it as physical and mental exhaustion. Burnout and mental health problems can manifest from long work shifts work long shifts and being constantly on the go. Symptoms for her, look like fatigue, changes in eating patterns, feeling stressed, changes in sleep, feelings of hopelessness, feeling withdrawn, restlessness, and restless thoughts. Sometimes attributing the symptoms to regular life and feelings or being a nurse rather than actual burnout or other issues.
Berenice defines it as pouring too much out and not receiving enough, essentially creating an imbalance in your life. For nurses, they can be in a constant cycle of saying yes without enforcing boundaries with coworkers, managers, and within themselves. She believes many of these habits start from nursing school as they can sometimes lack important training for taking care of your mental well-being. Rather, these programs focus on nursing becoming your whole life. Berenice went into how a cycle of pleasing everyone else can become unmanageable. It can be difficult to please everyone else and continue to stay true to yourself.
Thu shared how burnout experiences can be very similar across many healthcare jobs including nurses, pharmacists, and doctors. Moreover, it tends to happen quite a lot for healthcare providers. Thu explains that it can be highly likely due to perfectionism cultures in school, anxiety when practicing, high-pressure environments, and the lives of people on the line. She defined some symptoms of burnout as feeling alone, mental exhaustion, inability to do anything after work, feeling less joy about what we're doing, losing sight of why we're here, and feelings of hopelessness. Having the right support is necessary and institutional issues can arise if they don’t provide these resources.
What are your experiences like with mental health and burnout?
Fallon experienced burnout in the sixth year of her nursing career. She felt immense pressure from work, family, and other life stressors. In her upbringing as a Latina, topics like self-care and coping mechanisms were not really taught. She went into nursing school with such passion to make a difference but was unable to set boundaries. People-pleasing began at the beginning of her career. Then with days off, recovering was not really an option. She reverted to the coping mechanism learned early in her life like drinking, smoking, and getting into relationships – strategies that only made her mental health worse and cause more stress. She suffered from a lot of stress, anxiety, depression, very helplessness, and feeling like she was alone because of the lack of Latina representation in her field. She felt like she didn’t have people around that supported her. Reaching her breaking point, she wants to leave the profession as a whole. She transitioned into becoming a personal trainer and health and wellness coach. She wanted to feel like she could help people and see a change in what she was doing. She finally reclaimed her passion for helping others and was able to help herself. She went to therapy, was able to cope with life's stressors, and strengthen her relationship with God and her family – truly healing and making a difference. She needed a community, to build healthier habits and create stronger boundaries. Breaking a cycle does not happen overnight but, it does happen slowly and surely.
Berenice’s experience in the nursing industry began early in high school. She realized during these experiences that “jobs do not care about you,” essentially only being there for a purpose and doing your job in exchange for a check. From this, she knew that you have to learn how to take care of yourself because your job will not do that to you. She dealt with burnout as a CNA and always walked away from jobs when they were no longer serving the purpose, she needed them to or if she felt too stressed. She also learned early to take a break and some time off every quarter to reset. She felt more symptoms of burnout not only from her job but from other external issues. In one of her experiences, she hated her job, could not stand her manager, went through a bad breakup, and was grieving the loss of her family member. All things leading up to tremendous stress and depression. She cried through it all but felt like she needed to take a step back. Thankfully, she had a great support system which she feels many people need. She got herself a life coach and unlearned unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Thu experienced burnout during the pandemic, like many other healthcare professionals. She felt a large part of this was the uncertainty of everything going on in the world. There were also a lot of systemic issues within the health system and the U.S. Supply shortages, patient overload, lack of support, and uncertainty were major factors in her experience. It was a highly stressful time. She felt hopeless and would cry through these moments while also feeling scared for coworkers and sad for patients and families going through it as well. It was such a strange and emotional time for her, feeling so much pressure from everything. During this time she let go of her self-care routines due to the exhaustion and even due to the quarantine rules set in place. At this time, she found that once everything settled by itself, she felt a little better about the situation. She hopes that in the future, transparency to healthcare workers and patients, in general, would be a much better approach. It would allow people to feel more secure and enforce a better sense of support within communities and on a national level. She believes to counter this for the ‘next’ time, we need to review and think about how systems should be treating people and sharing information.
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What do you believe are the future trends of these issues? Better or worse??
Fallon as an optimistic person is hopeful for the future in healthcare. The pandemic has revealed the weaknesses of the system and what needs to be worked on. She thinks it's up to healthcare workers and the general public to work on things and not just rely on pollical leaders, jobs, or systems to make a change. She has been seeing a lot of people on social media standing up for what is right on social media and hopes that their stances continue to make noise to foster a sense of community and unification. She understands that many people have their own battles with mental health and burnout, but there is positive change ahead. More people are being heard, and actions will soon be taken.
Berenice observed that we are currently in a state of heightened awareness of issues in the healthcare industry. However, she feels that awareness is not enough to propel us forward. It’s difficult to get people to the next step, as she’s experienced. She hopes that over time people will be less afraid to ask for help from managers and coworkers. As well, she hopes that the stigma of seeing a therapist or taking medications will be reduced. She wants to see organizations make these resources more accessible to their employees and listen and adapt to workers’ needs. She thinks the future is not looking good right now, but there can always be change.
Thu’s stance is similar in the sense that trends seem to be heading toward more burnout. These results are a continuation of what has been happening in the industry even before the pandemic. The current state of the world has only exacerbated and accelerated the current mental health issues going on. Thus, right now and for a few years, we are going to continue seeing negative consequences. However, in light of these events, corporations and health systems will have no choice but to see and notice what is going on and make a change. People on individual levels have already begun using their platforms to speak about their experiences and share their stories. This is exactly what Thu has done on her LinkedIn profile. Share throughs, ideas, and stories, to inspire others to do something similar. She wants managers and hospital leaders to start paying attention and making changes so that people can grow a passion and motivation for their work again. She knows it’s going to be a lot of work, but she sees that people are finally starting to wake up and notice.??
What are the long-term consequences if we ignore these issues??
Fallon looks at the current state of everything and knows that if we continue to ignore the trends, it will be a discouraging future. Burnout being the norm is not something you want to imagine. She does not want to be in an environment that is sink or swim, with no support, and resources. She believes it will lead to more shortages and nurses leaving the profession to do something else. Nurses will only continue to feel helpless, and helpless, and that will affect the patients too. She feels that the industry is filled with all these moving pieces and that health workers make the whole piece of the pie. Its effects are contagious and will spread. Nurses care for patients with the intent of healing body, mind and soul – she wants the same for nurses as well. Hopefully, everyone can start building upon healthy habits so these issues do not continue.
Berenice feels like the industry is already going through the consequences of ignoring issues. She sees that nurses are going through the mud and there may be a need for more mental health floors, psych floors, courtrooms, and even some morgues. People are having mental breakdowns that are leading to physical breakdowns. She looks into the healthcare industry and feels like nobody is truly understanding what is going on and that root issues are not being properly resolved. She hopes that it does not spiral out of control, but she fears it could become a reality if nothing is done.
Thu agrees with many of the opinions shared by fellow panellists. If no changes are made to care for the mental health of an individual and system level, we are heading toward a terrible mental health crisis.
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If there was only one thing you hope the people in the audience today do or learn as a result of our conversation, what would it be?????
Fallon wants people to know that they have choices. You are able to make decisions for yourself. To not be the burnt-out nurse and taking back your power. Becoming self-aware is where you can start. Self-care goes further than bubble baths and face masks but comes from within. You can talk to yourself, you can do the deep breathing, you can decompress and re-centre. You can choose to do something different. You don't have to go along with the norm.
Berenice wants people to know that it is okay to go and get help. Just like how nurses have to keep up with their continuing education, it is important to practice that in your daily life as well. It is important to progress and make investments into yourself.?Developing and not staying complacent or in a cycle is key to a better version of yourself.
Thu shares that self-reflection and fighting for what you want are so important. Being honest with yourself can be difficult and doing what you want in life can also be a challenge. Learning about yourself can help you get out of a situation where you feel hopeless and stuck. Ask yourself deep questions to get to know what you truly want and where you want to be.
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