3 Ways Mental Health Providers Can Avoid Compassion Fatigue and Burnout
Andrena McGroarty, PMHNP, MSN, RN & Founder, ReifyResilience Inc
Imagine if you were trained to help someone unable to communicate their needs. Imagine they fear for their safety, face discrimination or coercion if they were to disclose their needs fully. Imagine then if all this were not a barrier, you are still unable to provide them with consistent access to resources they need due to regulations limiting length or type of treatment. It’s no surprise that those of us drawn to caring for vulnerable, under-resourced, and highly stigmatized populations find ourselves experiencing burnout and moral injury.
I have been a Board Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP-BC) for the past decade. Despite loving my profession, each time I left a job, it was for the same reason. I was unable to deliver the care my clients need, and I was left feeling exhausted, frustrated, and sad. Inefficient and medically unsound regulations including time-consuming prior authorization requests, limitations in length or type of payor-approved service, and poor reimbursement rates for mental health professionals continue to complicate mental health care delivery. Surrounded by disengaged and cynical colleagues left me feeling the pressure of ensuring my clients felt empathy and support as we navigated this system together.
Mental health providers like myself are at high risk of compassion fatigue and burnout due to the disconnect between a desire to provide competent, compassionate care and the current U.S. healthcare system’s lack of support and investment. Affecting 21–67% of mental health providers depending on setting and region, burnout often becomes a chronic condition where after one year, 40% of providers remain in the same stage of burnout while about a third become even more burned out.
As demand for mental health services increases in the aftermath of 2020, mental health providers staying in the profession and addressing their own mental health is more important than ever. Already, two-thirds of all primary care providers in the U.S. say they have trouble finding a referral to mental health specialists for their patients. Although many of us feel the effect of persistent stress and increased isolation, there are some things we can do.
3 Effective Ways to Reify Resilience
- Intra-professional Coaching and Peer Support
A 2019 randomized control trial demonstrated the benefit of an intra-professional certified coach for burnout with as few as 6 sessions over a 6 month period. Less structured peer support is demonstrably beneficial as well, with “sense of belonging” being independently associated with decreased self-report of overall burnout and decreased likelihood of leaving your current job. Put simply, we get by with a little help from our friends.
2. Establish Boundaries
Healthy boundaries in all facets of your life will result in an improved sense of control and satisfaction. Remember that a job interview is as much about you exploring if they are a fit for you as it is about you being a good hire for them. Be firm about setting safe and practical expectations for scheduling, workload, and administrative tasks.
3. Talk to Your Organization
Potential or current employers cannot anticipate what you need to stay practicing and stay well unless you tell them. Ongoing communication from providers to decision-makers in your organization is essential to identify areas where your employer can improve systemic processes and thus improve access and quality of care for consumers. Gallup found that accurate and frequent feedback to the executive and management level resulted in providers being 14.9% less likely to leave their job.
What You Can Do As An Employer
After interviewing several behavioral health leaders in executive management, I learned that organizational leaders are highly motivated to keep the team they train but lack adequate information from providers to track and support their wellbeing. Tele-psychiatry and other innovations in patient care delivery ask providers to adapt rapidly to both executing and co-developing best practices in health-tech. Anticipating the needs of your providers as they navigate emerging technologies will reduce their risk of stress. Here are some things you can start to do today:
- Discuss role expectations and potential role ambiguity with members of the interdisciplinary team.
- Improve access to, and advocate for, ongoing professional education
- Provide equitable recognition and appreciation
If you are in an executive or other leadership position in a behavioral health organization and are interested in having more conversations, join our Linkedin group, Avoiding Mental Health Provider Burnout, or follow us on Twitter.
If you are a licensed clinician looking to have peer supervision and support made incredibly easy, check out peer support and supervision with ReifyResilience, a PMHNP founded company whose mission is reducing compassion fatigue, burnout, and their consequences; disengagement and turnover.
