Being ALL IN for
Health Workers’ Mental Health

A healthy workforce is essential for safe, compassionate patient care. Yet health workers are experiencing a mental health crisis, with unprecedented rates of burnout and mental health conditions contributing to workforce shortages and impacting patient access to timely, quality care. Health workers navigate unique physical, emotional, and ethical challenges daily, including:

• Long, irregular hours and unsafe, difficult work environments
• Routine exposure to suffering and emotionally difficult situations
• Resource shortages and high clinical demands
• Payment models and technologies that complicate patient care delivery
• Policies interfering with clinical decision-making with patients

In addition to the operational practices and processes driving health worker burnout, stigmatizing policies and practices often discourage health workers from seeking mental health care, based on the misplaced belief that this protects patient safety. But the reality is starkly different: when health workers fear seeking help, the quality of care declines, mental health conditions and burnout intensify, workforce shortages grow, and lives are lost.

This must change. Patients have the right to access mental health care and support. Health workers have the right, too.