This week, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a new advisory on Addressing The Health Care Workforce Burnout. The advisory highlights the urgent need to address the burnout crisis impacting health care workers across the country. Notably, the Biden Administration emphasizes the mental health and wellbeing of health workers as a priority and promotes it as a core objective of the President’s National Mental Health Strategy. Some of the recommendations in the advisory include eliminating punitive policies for workers seeking mental health and substance use disorder care, investing in public health and the public health workforce, and reducing administrative burdens to help health workers have productive time with patients, communities, and colleagues. Read the advisory here.

Professional self-care is both an individual and organizational responsibility. For those who may be interested in building their individual skills, WSU CEI hosted a five part series on Professional Self-Care for those working in local health departments. Recordings of these sessions and accompanying handouts can be viewed at https://kphcollaborative.org/covid-capacity-series/. This series is based on a resource that also helps to develop organizational capacity for building healthy work cultures called the Compassion Resilience Toolkit. The developers of the toolkit have created resources for educators, healthcare providers, and families that can help build the capacity to manage individual and organizational stressors.

If you would like to learn more about how the Community Engagement Institute can help your organization create more compassionate cultures, email TISCTeam@wichita.edu.