Chair File: Building Resilience and Ensuring the Well-being of Our Healthcare Workforce

A career in healthcare is rewarding yet challenging. Through every day and every shift, healthcare professionals help patients and families navigate what could be one of the most difficult experiences in their lives. 

Performing lifesaving procedures and surgeries, cleaning and wrapping wounds, making diagnoses and creating treatment plans, listening to patients’ concerns and comforting families — these tasks and more are routine responsibilities for physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals. 

As they fulfill their responsibilities, clinicians are committed to putting their patients’ needs first and maintaining standards of competence and integrity — all of which can be strained by competing priorities, pace and time pressures in our care delivery system. 

In response, hospitals and health systems are developing multifaceted strategies to address burnout, build resilience and ensure the well-being of the healthcare workforce. 

Healthcare is a profession where resilience and strength are expected. One critical aspect of ensuring the well-being of healthcare professionals is breaking down barriers that limit or prevent them from accessing mental healthcare. 

There can be stigma around seeking mental healthcare, or a misplaced belief that someone’s condition or mental status automatically has an impact on their ability to practice medicine.  

The AHA offers a wide array of resources to support healthcare professionals’ well-being. On the AHA’s Behavioral Health webpages, you’ll find videos and other information on how healthcare professionals are addressing mental health issues, including a guide on suicide prevention in the workforce. The AHA’s Workforce webpages provide reports and examples from the field on strengthening the healthcare workforce, including addressing well-being. The AHA Physician Alliance supports physician leaders to “Lead Well. Be Well. Care Well.” 

In addition, the AHA is a strategic partner and national collaborator of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation, working together through initiatives such as “ALL IN: Wellbeing First for Healthcare” to advance healthcare workforce well-being, reduce stigma around mental healthcare, and promote evidence-based organizational practices that support clinicians and caregivers.

Ensuring the health and well-being of clinicians and other healthcare professionals is paramount to providing high-quality patient care.  The AHA will continue to support hospitals and health systems in this important endeavor.