Healthcare Faces Growing Worker Burnout

Some standard advice for retail property owners in trying economic times is to keep an eye on tenants and their industries are doing. Knowing might provide advanced warning of someone who might no longer be able to pay rent.

But no business can operate if it doesn’t have an adequate workforce, so having a sense, if possible, of the state of workers is also important. Consider the healthcare industry, which has been facing challenges while also being an important source of business for commercial real estate.

A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that “Health workers faced overwhelming demands and experienced crisis levels of burnout before the COVID-19 pandemic; the pandemic presented unique challenges that further impaired their mental health.”

The findings take on outsized important in light of the recent Biden Administration proposal of new minimum staffing requirements that will require nursing homes to have a registered nurse on site 24/7 and to provide three hours of care per resident per day.

The researchers analyzed data from the Quality of Worklife Module from the General Social Survey, a biannual, nationally representative, personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center and funded by the National Science Foundation. Included were responses from 2018 (1,443 respondents, including 226 health workers) and 2022 (1,952, including 325 health workers). Answers are self-reporting.

Between 2018 and 2022, health workers saw an increase of 1.2 days — from 3.3 days to 4.5 days — of poor mental health over the previous 30 days. The percentage that sometimes or often had sleep problems went from 56.9% to 64.3%.

The number reporting feeling burnout often or very often went from 31.9% to 45.6%. In 2022 only, as the question wasn’t apparently asked in 2018, 27.1% of respondents thought their workplaces had poor or moderate psychosocial safety.

Not everything deteriorated. In 2018, 37.9% says their workplaces rarely or never had enough staff members on duty. But in 2022, the amount was 30.1%.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, 33.4% of staff intended to leave. In 2022, that percentage increased to 42.2%.

Aside from questions of mental health and burnout threats, a look at pay levels also suggest that low compensation could be a complicating dynamic. Although improved from 2018, 33.9% made less than $35,000 a year; 38.4%, between $35,000 and $74,999; 20.9% from $75,000 to $149,999; and 6.8% $150,000 or more.

Ultimately, the right work conditions correlated to better mental health results. “Compared with health workers who reported a poor psychosocial safety climate, the odds of reporting burnout were 0.35 and 0.24 times those among health workers who reported moderate and good psychosocial safety climates, respectively,” the study said.

Among health workers who reported that they trusted management and whose supervisors provided help, the odds of reporting burnout were 0.40 and 0.26 times, respectively, compared to those among health workers who reported that they did not trust management or whose supervisors did not provide help.

Health workers who took part in decision-making had 0.56 times the odds of reporting depression symptoms compared with health workers who reported they did not. Health workers who reported that there were not enough staff members had 1.91 times the odds of reporting symptoms of anxiety and 2.73 times the odds of reporting burnout compared with those who did not report staffing shortages.

Health workers who reported having enough time to complete work had 0.33 times the odds of reporting burnout compared with health workers who did not. Finally, health workers who reported that conditions at work support productivity had 0.38 times the odds of reporting burnout compared with those who did not.