The capacity and well-being of the U.S. health workforce has been under threat for years by an epidemic of burnout, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this systems issue. Now more nurses, physicians, and state and local public health department employees than ever are considering leaving their professions.
Recognizing that the function of the U.S. health system is at stake, the NAM released the National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being in October 2022 to drive collective action to strengthen health workforce well-being and restore the health of the nation.
NAM Collaborative and founding partners have announced March 18 as the annual, national Health Workforce Well-Being (HWWB) Day
Details and resources on how health and other leaders, policymakers, health workers, patients and families can participate in HWWB Day, as well as take further next steps in the movement, are available at: nam.edu/HWWBDay
Take the next step and join our health workforce well-being movement
The NAM invites health organizations and other key actors to join an inaugural cohort of Change Makers in affirming their commitment to Priority Area 6: institutionalizing health worker well-being as a long-term value.
Priority Areas
The National Plan calls on multiple actors – including health care and public health leaders, government, payers, industry, educators, and leaders in other sectors – to help drive policy and systems change. See goals and related resources in the following priority areas to better support the health workforce and the health of all communities.
Create and sustain positive work and learning environments and culture
Transform health systems, health education, and training by prioritizing and investing in efforts to optimize environments that prevent and reduce burnout, foster professional well-being, and support quality care.
Goal 1 Culture of well-being is integrated into program operations, human resource management, services, and curricula.
Goal 2 Settings are diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive.
Goal 3 Increased retention and decreased turnover of health workers.
Goal 4 Leadership recognizes negative impacts of health worker burnout and fosters a culture of well-being.
Goal 5 Accountability standards and best practices for well-being are adopted.
Related Resources:
Advance Organizational Commitment
- White Paper: Framework for Improving Joy in Work
- Report: CLER Pathways to Excellence: Expectations for an Optimal Clinical Learning Environment to Achieve Safe and High-Quality Patient Care, Version 2.0
- Guide: Well-Being Playbook: A Guide for Hospital and Health System Leaders
- Guide: Establishing a Chief Wellness Officer Position
- Guide: The Pharmacist’s Fundamental Rights and Responsibilities
- Guide: NIOSH Safe Patient Handling and Mobility
- Case Example: Workplace Wellness Champions: Lessons Learned and Implications for Future Programming
- Infographic: Survey Shows Substantial Racism in Nursing
- Recognition Programs:
– Joy in Medicine Health System Recognition Program
– Beacon Award
– Pathway to Excellence Program and the Magnet Recognition Program
– ASHP Certified Center of Excellence in Medication Use Safety and Pharmacy Practice
Strengthen Leadership Behaviors
- Guide: Chief Wellness Officer Roadmap
- Discussion Paper: A Call to Action: Align Well-Being and Antiracism Strategies
Conduct Workplace Assessment
- Overview of Established Tools: Valid and Reliable Survey Instruments to Measure Burnout, Well-Being, and Other Work-Related Dimensions
- Infographic/Assessment Tool: Standards for Establishing and Sustaining a Healthy Work Environment
- Guide: NIOSH Total Worker Health Program
Cultivate a Culture of Connection and Support
- Guide: A Nurse’s Guide to Preventing Compassion Fatigue, Moral Distress, and Burnout
- Guide: “What Matters to You?” Conversation Guide for Improving Joy in Work
- Case Study: Culture of Well-Being
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
Support mental health and reduce stigma
Provide support to health workers by eliminating barriers and reducing stigma associated with seeking services to address mental health challenges.
Goal 1 The mental health workforce is strengthened with increased numbers of practitioners.
Goal 2 Adequate mental health services are available, easily accessible, confidential, dignified, paid for, and health workers and learners are encouraged to use them.
Goal 3 Stigma and barriers are reduced for health workers and learners to disclose mental health issues and utilize mental health services.
Goal 4 Health workers and learners do not experience unnecessary punitive actions when seeking mental health services.
Goal 5 Access to mental health resources is correlated with improved health worker well-being.
Related Resources:
Cultivate a Culture of Connection and Support
- Organizational Guide: 2022 Healthcare Workforce Rescue Package
- Organizational Guide: Conversation and Action Guide to Support Staff Well-Being and Joy in Work During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Organizational Graphic: Psychological PPE: Promote Health Care Workforce Mental Health and Well-Being
- Organizational Guide: Peer Support Programs for Physicians
- Organizational Guide: At the Heart of the Pandemic: Nursing Peer Support
- Organizational Guide: Preventing Physician Suicide: Identify and Support At-Risk Physicians
- Individual Support Guide: Provider Well-Being for Behavioral Health Professionals
- Individual Support Guide: Health Care Professionals
- Resource Compilation: COVID Resources
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
Engage effective technology tools
Optimize and expand the use of health information technologies that support health workers in providing high-quality patient care and serving population health, and minimize technologies that inhibit clinical decision-making or add to administrative burden.
Goal 1 Health IT is user friendly and affordable, and meets standards co-designed with users.
Goal 2 Health IT is interoperable across disciplines and platforms to enhance team-based care and continuity of care.
Goal 3 Technology innovations improve both patient care and workload of health workers.
Goal 4 Technologies facilitate increased personal connections with patients.
Goal 5 The use of technology is understood and established as an enabler to streamline care.
Related Resources:
Enhance Workplace Efficiency
- Calculator/Guide: Team Documentation: Improve Efficiency, Workflow, and Patient Care
- Webinar: Taming the EHR
- Case Study: HCA Healthcare’s Program to Streamline Documentation for Nursing
- Case Study: Just in Time: EHR Training at Atlantic Medical Group
- Commentary: Evaluating and Reducing Cognitive Load Should Be a Priority for Machine Learning
- Framework: Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement
Strengthen Leadership Behaviors
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
Invest in measurement, assessment, strategies, and research
Expand the uptake of existing tools at the health system level and advance national research on decreasing health worker burnout and improving well-being.
Goal 1 Burnout and well-being of health workers and learners, and the drivers of workplace stress, are routinely measured.
Goal 2 A national commitment is made to invest in research, strategies, and partnerships to improve health worker and learner well-being.
Related Resources:
Conduct Workplace Assessment
- Overview of Established Tools: Valid and Reliable Survey Instruments to Measure Burnout, Well-Being, and Other Work-Related Dimensions
- Tool: Healthy Work Environment Assessment Tool
- Tool: NIOSH Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WELLBQ)
- Tool: Wellness Culture and Environment Support Scale
- Calculator: Organizational Cost of Physician Burnout
- Discussion Paper: A Pragmatic Approach for Organizations to Measure Health Care Professional Well-Being
- Discussion Paper: Establishing Crosswalks Between Common Measures of Burnout in US Physicians
- Survey Findings: Pulse on the Nation’s Nurses Survey Series: COVID-19 Two-Year Impact Assessment Survey
Strengthen Leadership Behaviors
- Guide: Cultivating Leadership: Measure and Assess Leader Behaviors to Improve Professional Well-Being
- Perspective: Preventing a Parallel Pandemic—A National Strategy to Protect Clinicians’ Well-Being
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
Address compliance, regulatory, and policy barriers for daily work
Prevent and reduce the unnecessary burdens that stem from laws, regulations, policies, and standards placed on health workers.
Goal 1 Time spent on documentation is reduced to provide more time for meaningful professional activities and personal well-being.
Goal 2 Policies address hybrid, virtual, and in-person workflows to facilitate work-life integration and responsive patient care.
Goal 3 Prior authorization requirements are reimagined in a manner that places a focus on supporting quality patient care while also reducing unnecessary burden on health workers.
Goal 4 Requirements are streamlined for health workers to comply with regulations and policies.
Goal 5 Interstate practice is simplified and virtual services are easy for health workers and patients to use.
Related Resources:
Conduct Workplace Assessment
- Tool: NASA Task Load Index
Enhance Workplace Efficiency
- Guide: Saving Time Playbook
- Calculator/Guide: Team Documentation: Improve Efficiency, Workflow, and Patient Care
- Guide: Lean Healthcare
Examine Policies and Practices
- Guide: Debunking Regulatory Myths
- Guide: Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff
- Framework: Putting Patients First by Reducing Administrative Tasks in Health Care
- Policy Considerations: Practice and Policy Reset Post-COVID-19: Reversion, Transition, or Transformation?
- Policy Action Items: 25 by 5 Initiative to Reduce Documentation Burden on U.S. Clinicians by 75% by 2025
- Initiative: Occupational Therapy Licensure Compact
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
Institutionalize well-being as a long-term value
Ensure COVID-19 recovery efforts address the toll on health worker well-being now and in the future, and bolster the public health and health care systems for future emergencies.
Goal 1 Health worker and learner well-being are prioritized, reflected in, and operationalized in strategic plans and core values.
Goal 2 The effects of COVID-19 on the well-being of the health workforce are addressed.
Goal 3 A strong and coordinated national public health infrastructure has a thriving public health workforce.
Related Resources:
Cultivate a Culture of Connection and Support
- Guide: Conversation and Action Guide to Support Staff Well-Being and Joy in Work during and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Guide: Well-Being Playbook 2.0: A COVID-19 Resource for Hospital and Health System Leaders
- Guide: Building Bridges Between Practicing Physicians and Administrators
- Organizational Best Practices: At the Heart of the Pandemic: Nursing Peer Support
- Organizational Graphic: Psychological PPE: Promote Health Care Workforce Mental Health and Well-Being
- Overview of COVID-19 Resources by Roles: COVID-19: Stress and Coping Resources
Advance Organizational Commitment
- Guide: A Guide to Promoting Health Care Workforce Well-Being During and After the Pandemic
- Guide: Creating the Organizational Foundation for Joy in Medicine
- Guide: Wellness with COVID: Contagious Strategies to Promote Pharmacy Well-Being
- Brief: Call to Action: Improving Clinician Well-Being and Patient Care and Safety
- Discussion Paper/Guide: Healing the Professional Culture of Medicine
- Fact Sheet: Prevention and Public Health Fund Fact Sheet
Strengthen Leadership Behaviors
- Compilation: Leading Through Crisis: A Resource Compendium for Nurse Leaders
- Guide: Well-Being Playbook: A Guide for Hospital and Health System Leaders
- Guide: Appreciative Inquiry Principles: Ask “What Went Well” to Foster Positive Organizational Culture
- Guide: Cultivating Leadership: Measure and Assess Leader Behaviors to Improve Professional Well-Being
- Strategies: Executive Leadership and Physician Well-Being: Nine Organizational Strategies to Promote Engagement and Reduce Burnout
- Discussion Paper: A Call to Action: Align Well-Being and Antiracism Strategies
- Guide: Grief Leadership: Leadership in the Wake of Tragedy
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
Recruit and retain a diverse and inclusive health workforce
Promote careers in the health professions and increase pathways and systems for a diverse, inclusive, and thriving workforce.
Goal 1 The size and composition of the health workforce reflects the demand and diversity of the U.S. population.
Goal 2 The health system retains health workers who have personal caregiving responsibilities.
Goal 3 Health care environments are person-centered and safe for health workers.
Goal 4 Health workers have the infrastructure to support their work to improve population health.
Goal 5 Health workers and learners are inspired and equipped to meet the challenges of caring for the nation.
Related Resources:
Examine Policies and Practices
- Strategies: Policy Strategies for Addressing Current Threats to the U.S. Nursing Workforce
- Survey: Matriculating Student Questionnaire
Strengthen Leadership Behaviors
- Discussion Paper/Action Items: Physician Well-Being 2.0: Where We Are and Where We Are Going
- Discussion Paper/Action Items: Getting Through COVID-19: Keeping Clinicians in the Workforce
- Discussion Paper: A Call to Action: Align Well-Being and Antiracism Strategies
For additional resources, visit the NAM’s Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being.
New Video Series
Health Leaders Operationalize National Plan
The NAM is pleased to share short videos from health leaders on the critical need to advance health workforce well-being. Get inspired by how leaders across the health sector are using the National Plan to cultivate a movement to optimize care providers’ well-being.
Call to Action
The National Plan builds on the foundation of six years of research and collaboration among NAM’s network of 200 organizations committed to reversing trends in health worker burnout. The National Plan is intended as a tool for all actors to take further evidence-based steps to improve the health system, with evaluation and accountability.
Improving health worker well-being is a shared responsibility that requires collective action by all actors of the U.S. health system and those who influence health. Together, we can support a coordinated national movement for health workforce well-being. The NAM looks forward to working with change makers to set commitments and support efforts to take up the National Plan.
Questions? Contact us at [email protected].
If you or a loved one is feeling distressed, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides free and confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
