CDC Releases 6-Step Guide to Reduce Health Care Burnout in Hospitals

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) released Impact Wellbeing^TM Guide: Taking Action to Improve Healthcare Worker Wellbeing, a 6-step actionable guide designed to address health care burnout in hospitals, according to a news release published by the CDC Newsroom.

The CDC’s NIOSH released this guide in March 2024 as a complement to the Impact Wellbeing^TM Campaign, first launched in October 2023, with the aim of addressing health care worker burnout. Although role of health care workers is to care for the whole of the population, health care workers themselves are currently facing a mental health care crisis and are in need of support from hospital systems. Between July and December 2023, a working group comprised of 6 hospitals in the United States pilot-tested and refined a series of 6 key steps to be taken by hospital leadership.

Since publishing the hospital-tested Guide, the CDC’s NIOSH plans to host a webinar series beginning in April 2024 to teach hospital leaders how to implement each portion of the Guide. The primary goal is that participating hospitals begin executing the Guide immediately following the webinar series.

The Impact Wellbeing^TM Guide: Taking Action to Improve Healthcare Worker Wellbeing provides hospitals with a step-by-step process to accelerate professional wellbeing, while still taking time, cost, and staffing concerns into account. The 6 steps include:

1. Internally review the hospital operations to assess if professional wellbeing is currently supported.
2. Establish a team at the site that is solely dedicated to supporting professional wellbeing.
3. Knock down barriers inhibiting access to care (ie, remove intrusive mental health-related questions on credentialing applications).
4. Design communication tools that enable the sharing of updates on the hospital’s goal of improving professional wellbeing with the workforce.
5. Incorporate wellbeing measures into a current quality improvement project.
6. Outline a 12-month plan detailing how the hospital’s professional well-being journey can progress.

As evidenced by the pilot program, which was conducted at CHI St Vincent Infirmary, CHI St Vincent Hot Springs, CHI Saint Joseph Hospital, CHI Health-Creighton University Medical Center-Bergan Mercy, CHI Health Mercy Council Bluffs, and CHI Health Lakeside, the guide has served as a catalyst, resulting in the accelerated use of existing tools and resources within the health care system.

“The role of healthcare workers in taking care of all of us is absolutely vital to our society, our economy, and our culture. But our healthcare workforce needs to feel supported, too,” stated John Howard, MD, director of NIOSH, in the news release.