In 2025, nearly half of surveyed physicians reported experiencing symptoms of burnout and depression. While burnout is not a new concern in healthcare, it has become one of the most persistent and complex challenges facing the healthcare industry today. Its impact now extends beyond clinical teams, affecting healthcare leaders, operations, and long-term workforce stability.

While healthcare administrators are frequently tasked with reducing clinician distress, their own experiences with stress often go unaddressed. This raises a critical question: How can healthcare leaders support staff well-being without neglecting their own?

3 Strategies That Can Help Reduce Burnout

There is no single answer to mitigating burnout in healthcare, and no playbook that applies universally to all. However, there are some approaches that are gaining traction among healthcare leaders seeking to reduce burnout among their clinical teams and themselves. These include:

1. Prioritize Communication and Strengthen Culture

Frontline providers are often the first to feel the effects of operational strain. Yet their insights and concerns can be missed without clear pathways for communication. The same is true for healthcare leaders, who may be operating under pressure without access to frontline insight or candid feedback.

Encouraging open dialogue and fostering a culture of listening can create early opportunities to reduce burnout before it escalates. When physicians and advanced practitioners are invited to offer feedback, contribute to decision making, and shape the direction of their departments, they are more likely to feel connected to their work and supported by leadership.

Many healthcare organizations are making space for this through town halls, pulse surveys, and routine check-ins. These conversations not only enhance engagement but also benefit healthcare leaders, who in turn gain better visibility into team dynamics, which can help prevent operational issues before they escalate into larger problems.

This kind of responsiveness can also strengthen recruitment and retention efforts. As physician shortages continue and health systems compete for talent, offering meaningful input, schedule flexibility, retention incentives, or capped hours can signal to providers that their well-being is being taken seriously. When communication becomes part of the culture, burnout becomes easier to spot and easier to address.

2. Create a Flexible Staffing Model & Address Staffing Needs

Staffing strain is one of the most visible drivers of burnout across healthcare. When clinical teams do not have adequate staffing coverage, they face increased patient volumes, heightened workloads, and limited access to time off, leading to fewer chances to maintain work-life balance. Healthcare leaders navigating these provider shortages are under pressure as well, often making urgent decisions that stretch existing staff or disrupt care delivery.

Just as communication builds trust, flexible staffing creates stability. It opens the door to more manageable schedules, planned time off, and greater control over how and when clinicians work. For healthcare leaders, it provides a structured way to reduce reactive staffing decisions and protect the capacity of core teams.

Many healthcare organizations are addressing this issue by capping working hours, planning for seasonal fluctuations, or redesigning shifts to provide better coverage. Some are partnering with interim healthcare staffing agencies, such as Medicus, to expand access to external providers and create more adaptable schedules.

Flexible staffing efforts do more than relieve short-term pressure. They help retain providers by reducing burnout risk and strengthen recruitment by showing that well-being is a long-term priority. When staffing models are designed with flexibility in mind, both clinicians and leaders are better positioned to succeed.

3. Consider Locum Tenens as a Supportive Resource

As staffing challenges persist, many healthcare organizations are turning to locum tenens not only for short-term coverage but also as part of a broader workforce strategy. For clinical teams, locums help protect time off, stabilize daily workloads, and reduce the risk of burnout. For healthcare leaders, when integrated strategically, locums can support long-term planning, enable more flexible scheduling, and give leaders the breathing room to address underlying staffing needs.

By partnering with an interim healthcare staffing agency like Medicus, healthcare leaders can leverage locum tenens without adding to the administrative burden that often accompanies locum tenens staffing. Medicus does this by managing the entire locum tenens process. We handle locum tenens sourcing, scheduling, credentialing, licensing, travel, and onboarding , reducing the administrative lift for internal teams. This allows healthcare leaders to step back from time-consuming logistics and redirect their focus toward recruitment strategies, internal development, and solutions that support long-term workforce stability.

With the right support in place, healthcare organizations can be better equipped to maintain care continuity, mitigate the risk of burnout, and develop a more resilient clinical staffing plan for the future.

Interested in partnering with Medicus for locum tenens coverage? Complete the short form below to connect with a member of the Medicus team.
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