This is a topic that matters to me because I have spent much of my career working in environments where we ask healthcare professionals to do difficult things under difficult circumstances. Emergency departments, disasters, outbreaks, austere environments, and other high-stress settings require people to perform when they are tired, resources may be limited, and the consequences of decisions are very real.

There will always be stress in healthcare. We cannot eliminate that. But there is a difference between work that is inherently difficult and a work environment that makes difficult work unnecessarily harder.

That distinction was really the reason for this presentation.

I wanted us to look beyond the usual conversation about burnout and individual self-care and think about the environments we create for the people doing this work. When the same problems continue to exhaust an entire team, we have to be willing to ask whether we are dealing with an individual resilience problem at all.

For those who attended the presentation, I hope you will continue thinking about that question when you return to your own workplace. For those who were not able to attend, I have made the presentation available here so you can review the material and resources.

Most importantly, I hope this does not end as another presentation we attended, enjoyed, and then forgot.

Look at your own workplace and ask:

What are we asking healthcare workers to endure that we actually have the ability to change?

The answer will be different in every setting. That is exactly why the question is worth asking.

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