Industry Voices—Let’s restore frontliners’ personal achievement

Moored by a lack of personal protective equipment, changes in staffing, and a never-ending stream of incoming patients, healthcare workers are exhausted. A lacking sense of personal achievement can be devastating. A lack of personal achievement also strikes to the very definition of burnout itself. Why has a lack of personal achievement become such a challenge during the past year? Closely related, the lack of confidence in vaccines, the FDA, and the general administration of our health system erodes the healthcare provider’s sense of self-worth. Structural challenges in the healthcare system, along with a lack of equipment, a backlog of patients, and increasingly short-staffed provider teams, have built a trench of challenges that are going to take years to overcome. However, an increased sense of personal achievement can add wind to the sails of healthcare teams, helping to provide the strength to move forward and build out of the deep challenges that we face. But if we don’t push for structural change that develops a greater sense of achievement than we have today, we may find that we no longer have providers to care for us during the next wave of the pandemic.