Issues in Healthcare: The Mental Health Strain On Healthcare Workers
As Canadians start to transition back to their normal daily lives, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — one of the most significant experiences that many will carry on with them would be the mental toll of isolation and stress in living through the pandemic for almost two years. This can be seen in an increase of 4% from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021 showing 25% of Canadians aged 18 and over screening positive for presenting symptoms of depression, anxiety, or PTSD; and research showing that over 35% of working Canadians are feeling burnt out as of early 2022.
The pandemic’s effects took a huge strain on the mental health of many, but more on healthcare workers than any — especially nurses. In the same research, those who worked in the “Health and Patient Care” job sector showed a 53% in burnout rate, with a shocking 66% of nurses reporting they were burned out.
“Burnout” is a common term used to describe the emotional, mental, and/or physical depletion as a result of being overly stressed for a long time in the workplace. This feeling has been commonly used by workers in healthcare but can be widely used in any work field. This awful feeling can take away the enthusiasm and motivation for wanting to work.
A problem before the pandemic
This issue of healthcare workers being burned out has been a long and continued, serious problem across North America — even before the COVID-19 pandemic when a light on burnout and mental health was thankfully shined onto the issue. Before the pandemic, research led by Dr. Barry Rubin, surveyed physicians, nurses, and other associated health professionals on their feelings of burnout.
The research showed a staggering 78% of nurses who answered the survey saying they felt a sense of burnout; 73% of associated health professionals such as physical, respiratory, and occupational therapists, social workers, pharmacists, dieticians etc.; and around 65% of physicians part of the research.
Many factors play a role in the result of being burned out, including problems at the workplace itself like having a heavy workload, interpersonal conflict, moral distress, administrative tasks, overwhelming paperwork etc., or even personal problems such as low self-efficacy, emotional depletion, reduced feeling of personal accomplishment etc.
How are healthcare workers responding to this strain?
Nurses
Nurses play one of the most vital roles in patient care but are also one of the most undervalued healthcare workers in the field. For the longest time, nurses’ hard work and voiced concerns about their own work have been overlooked. One of the main concerns addressed by nurses about Canada’s healthcare system has been staffing shortages.
“I went from being a full-time nurse for the same organization for almost 15 years to dropping down to part-time, to potentially dropping the profession altogether at this point,” Sonja Bernhard explained in the above video, where she addressed her concerns as someone who has experienced first hand what she called, the “inability” of nurses doing their jobs due to barriers such as staffing shortages.
Many nurses across Canada, alongside Sonja, are demanding that the government take on the responsibility of helping to improve working conditions in hospitals — and for nurses altogether. If not, more nurses will be pressured into leaving the profession as a way to protect their well-being. As short-staffed as hospitals are already, if more nurses leave their profession, the horrific effects of this will be quickly seen in hospital waiting rooms and emergency medicine departments. Protecting nurses means protecting future and current patients.
Physicians
In 2017, the workforce survey conducted by the Canadian Medical Association showed that 29% of physicians planned to decrease their working hours in the next two years. Reducing work hours has become a common way for physicians to recover from feeling burnt out at work, or even a planned choice to minimize the hectic work hours taking away family time. Burnt-out physicians not only affect the workplace community, but also the response and physician-patient relationship that is necessary for delivering proper patient care — especially with family doctors.
A perfect example of this can be shown by Dr. Jeremy Topic, a pulmonary and critical-care physician in Chicago, Illinois who realized that he was burned out when he was receiving comments saying that residents no longer wanted to work with him. “I always prided myself on figuring out how to connect, how to adapt to the patient or the student,” he said. “I stopped doing that. I got frustrated much quicker.”
However, though this may seem like a great solution for physicians who still want to stay in their profession while taking a slight step back to take care of themselves — many find this option very difficult. One of the obvious problems is financial obstacles. Cutting work hours means cutting physicians’ paychecks — and though it has been widely believed that physicians are rich beyond their means, each physician and/or their family has different circumstances where some may not be able to afford a cut in their salary.
In addition to this, some physicians may feel guilty for cutting back their hours and not being available full-time for their patients. Dr. Andrew Clarke, executive director of the Physician Health Program of Doctors British Columbia, whose organization provides resources for burned-out physicians on how they can recover, says that cutting back hours is hardest for family physicians. Due to high demands, family physicians often will feel guilty for not being there full-time and “abandoning their patients or increasing the workload of their peers.”
Next Steps
As healthcare remains to be one of the well-known services that Canada offers, it’s important to have our country’s people feel that they are being taken care of during their most vulnerable times. This starts with protecting the very people that work to provide this care to patients — physicians, nurses, social workers, therapists, pharmacists etc. Their well-being and working conditions reflect their abilities to do their jobs in the workplace, and in turn, reflect the level of care that patients will receive. The government is being called upon to take action in helping healthcare workers and working with them to provide the best support systems/resources for workers. Residents/citizens of Canada are also being called upon to help shine a light on this important issue across the country — across North America, in support of all struggling healthcare workers.
About the Author
Jenny Pham is an incoming grade 12 student based in the small but large city of Mississauga, Ontario. She is currently working as a math & English tutor; is the founder and 2-year President of her school’s MEDLIFE club, a Chapter to a non-profit organization called the MEDLIFE Movement; and is a new volunteer with Peel Health working at a long-term care center. In her spare time, she greatly enjoys reading, running, and finding new crime T.V. shows to binge-watch.
