Imagine being so drained that even getting to work feels impossible. Now imagine your job is nursing or midwifery. You have to spend your days caring for others – but it feels impossible to even care for yourself. This is healthcare professional burnout. And if you leave it untreated, it will get worse.
The 2022 workforce survey by the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association warned that one in four primary healthcare nurses were considering leaving their role within five years. Three quarters of respondents reported feeling exhausted, stressed or burnt out at work. If they leave, Australia’s nursing shortage is set to worsen – leaving an even bigger workload for those who stay in the role.
Nurses aren’t alone. Over the last few years, burnout has become a significant problem for GPs, trainee and junior doctors, and midwives. But why are so many medical professionals being pushed to the edge by just doing their jobs? What can be done to help them? And how can we change the system, so people entering the health sector don’t suffer in the same way?
Systematic issues
For many, the term burnout doesn’t quite capture the reality of what primary healthcare workers are dealing with, says Dr Elizabeth Elder (B Arts Japanese ‘02; B Nursing ‘04; PhD ‘20; Grad Cert Emergency Nursing ‘11; M Advanced Practice ‘13; M Nursing Hons ‘15), a lecturer at Griffith University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery.
“Burnout can also be demoralisation,” she says. “Staff are generally well equipped to manage stresses if they’re given the resources. But if you have a constant influx of patients and not enough staff or equipment, people feel demoralised. Burnout is when you’re no longer functioning. Demoralisation is when the system is broken.”
Professor Emeritus Jenny Gamble (PhD ‘03), previously Head of Midwifery at Griffith and currently Professor of Midwifery at Monash University, agrees that the system needs repair. She points out that the emotional toll is not from caring itself, but from the inability to deliver the standard of care pregnant women and their babies deserve.
“It’s the powerlessness to make change, especially in the face of staff shortages, that causes moral injury,” says Gamble, who was an independent home and hospital midwife with twenty-plus years of clinical practice.
Unfortunately, these problems aren’t limited to one ward or even one profession: they reflect big-picture issues across healthcare. COVID-19 magnified cracks that were already there, pushing staff into longer hours and redeployment, and sometimes even leading to public hostility.
At the same time, Australians are living longer but not necessarily healthier lives, which means more people living with chronic, complex conditions that require intensive and ongoing care. Medicine itself is getting more complicated, with new treatments and technologies, and ever-increasing documentation adding pressure rather than reducing it.
Skipping breaks, working through illness and ‘doing more with less’ are common – and you don’t really have a choice, says Gamble. “I think healthcare professionals are let down by the system.
“You cannot just walk away from someone who needs help – for example, they are in pain or distress, or their daily needs must be attended to – just because you’re due to be off duty. You need to be relieved by another staff member.”
No more yoga
Unfortunately, individual coping strategies are not the long-term answer to burnout or repairing a system that is constantly letting down its workers. “Don’t tell me I need to do more yoga or go for another run. I have great coping strategies already,” says Elder. “The problem is organisational.”
Gamble agrees: “I hate the term ‘resilience’. It just pushes the responsibility back on the individual to survive in systems that are fundamentally unsupportive.”
Elder says that this tendency to downplay the true extent of burnout has been dubbed ‘wellbeing washing’, where institutions talk about staff wellbeing but limit their interventions to employee assistance programs or early finishes, while failing to address the deeper policy and workload problems.
Even sick leave is fraught with issues. “If you’ve got good leaders, they’ll say: ‘Don’t come in tomorrow if you’re unwell,’” says Elder. “But the guilt is that it puts pressure on others. There’s moral distress associated with taking time off, especially when you know your colleagues are already stretched.”
That guilt contributes to a vicious circle when tired workers try to keep coming in: “If you have staff who are exhausted, the risk of error goes up,” Elder explains. “Nursing is a 110% kind of job, but if you’re burnt out, your cognitive function isn’t as sharp. Patients deserve bright, cheerful staff. No one wants a jaded, bitter nurse looking after them.”
And the mismatch between hospital key performance indicators (KPIs) and patient needs adds another layer of frustration. “Hospitals are like a six-lane highway with a one-lane exit,” Elder says. “KPIs often don’t align with what’s best for staff or patients.”
The way forward
So what can healthcare professionals do to safeguard their mental health? One survival mechanism is quiet quitting, says Elder – where nurses still perform their duties but avoid going beyond the bare minimum. “Quiet quitting is a self-protective strategy,” she says. “They do what they need to do to get through the shift, but no more. They’re drawing a line in the sand. It’s not selfish to put yourself first.”
While this helps preserve mental health, it highlights the gap between what the system demands and what healthcare professionals can sustainably provide. Fixing the problem requires more than slogans.
“It’s multifactorial: we need a solid, well-prepared workforce with emotional intelligence and psychologically safe workplaces,” says Elder. Funding also needs attention. “Nurse practitioners can and should help fill primary care gaps, but funding models need to support it.”
Change is possible, she says, with collective action. “We can set a culture which reflects the work environments we want. For example, we now have legislation enshrined about psychologically safe work environments. That’s not just about being bullied but being able to speak up and saying that there aren’t enough staff, or that you need to take time off.”
Working within certain models – such as continuity of care, where a woman has the same midwife throughout her pregnancy – is also part of the solution, Gamble points out. “When midwives work in continuity models, they report less burnout, more job satisfaction, and outcomes for women and babies are better.”
Culture, leadership and collegiality can also be protective factors. “I grew up in Gold Coast Emergency Department,” says Elder. “Dr Green, our head of medicine, knew every nurse’s name, their families, and valued everyone from cleaners to consultants. That culture made a huge difference.” And peer support is vital, she adds. “You need someone who gets it – a friend who acknowledges how hard it is, without minimising it.”
Despite the challenges, Elder and Gamble agree that healthcare careers still offer extraordinary rewards – if the system can be reshaped to better support its people.
“Nursing is huge,” says Elder. “You can see the world with it.”
How to spot burnout – and survive it
- Burnout often creeps up unnoticed but there are warning signs, including constant fatigue, irritability, loss of empathy and detachment from work you once enjoyed. Physical red flags can be headaches, disrupted sleep or frequent illness.
- Act early and talk with a trusted colleague, seek professional support, and reduce non-essential tasks where possible.
- Setting boundaries, finding your ‘tribe’ of supportive peers, and pushing for systemic changes are all vital steps. Naming the problem is the first move towards protecting yourself and the people in your care.
Image captions (top to bottom):
- Jenny Gamble
Published 26 March 2026
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