When it comes to health care, Americans increasingly pay more for less. One in five patients now waits over two months to see a primary care physician or specialist. At its core, this crisis stems from a growing mismatch between patient demand and provider supply. In the wake of pandemic-era delays, demand for physicians has skyrocketed, while the healthcare workforce has shrunk by tens of thousands since 2020.
A major driver of this exodus is exhaustion. In the U.S., employee burnout costs the healthcare system billions each year in lost productivity and staff turnover. Each departure increases the burden on those who remain, creating a vicious cycle similar to what I have witnessed in Army Special Operations.
Why have we allowed the healthcare workforce to reach such a breaking point? The answer lies in a workplace culture that prioritizes daily endurance over sustainable schedules. For decades, healthcare systems tacitly celebrated martyrdom — praising those who worked the longest, slept the least, and sacrificed the most.
Patients need nurses and doctors who aren’t exhausted. But we can’t just tell healthcare workers — who are used to putting others’ needs before their own — to get better at maintaining their own health.
Healthcare is a calling for many providers, and asking them to put themselves first can feel at odds with their deeply ingrained sense of service.
Instead, healthcare organizations must fulfill their moral obligation to support their workers — physically, mentally, and emotionally — and insist on self-care as a line item for evaluation. Neglecting this responsibility doesn’t just harm individual employees; it erodes institutional culture, damages public trust, and ultimately compromises patient care. A nurse is unable to provide compassionate care while running on empty. A physician’s judgment is clouded by the fog of constant fatigue.
To protect our talent, our institutions, and ultimately our patients, we need to reimagine how we support employee wellbeing.
Some innovative health systems are demonstrating a better path.
For example, at Ohio State University, the MINDBODYSTRONG program equipped new nurses with cognitive strategies through weekly group sessions, yielding sustained improvements in mental health and job satisfaction.
And at my institution — the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City — physicians who fully engaged with our comprehensive wellness effort, The Resiliency Project, which combined the use of a wearable device with professional coaching, reported a threefold reduction in burnout symptoms over 12 weeks.
These success stories share common elements. They’re evidence based, integrated into schedules rather than piled on top of already heavy workloads, fully funded, and supported by leadership. And the implementers recognize that while individual resilience matters, it can’t compensate for the inherent stress that has become a cultural norm in healthcare.
We now have the tools and knowledge to make this transformation. Now we need the will to turn them into standard practice. It’s time to build a system that cares for caregivers as much as they care for us.
Steve Forti is a U.S. Army Special Forces combat veteran and former critical care nurse. Currently, he serves as the Chief Wellness and Resiliency Officer at the Hospital for Special Surgery. This piece originally ran in The Well News.
