In synchrony with health care providers’ reports of commitment to (and loving) their work, they are oftentimes burned-out with their caseloads, workplace politics, administrative demands and tendencies to under-report personal struggles or seek help. In this presentation, contemporary understandings of this problem, alongside empirically-supported strategies to mitigate it, will be described.

To begin, alarming scholarship that confirms the generally poor functioning of Western care providers (mental health, physical health) will be outlined. In synchrony with increased attention to self-care over the past 10+ years, investigators have shown that family therapists’, psychologists’, physicians’, nurses’, and other care professionals’ struggles are getting worse (not better). This is true across indicators of physical health (e.g., insomnia, obesity), health behaviors (e.g., alcohol use disorders, poor work/life boundaries), mental health (e.g., depression, burnout, compassion fatigue, suicidality), social health (e.g., divorce, intimate partner violence), and work-related performance (e.g., late charting, low professionalism, medical errors).

Conventional (old) wisdom – including things that we all know are important, but usually do not do (e.g., sleep hygiene, physical activity, purposeful time management, appropriate boundary setting), will be presented and paired with novel ways to promote and sustain beneficent behavior change. New and innovative technologies (e.g., wellness apps designed for the general public, compassion fatigue / satisfaction tracking apps designed specifically for healthcare providers) will be demonstrated in-vivo, and paired with individual- and team-based systems of maintaining provider wellness.

All told: attention to our whole selves (biopsychosocial/spiritual health) is essential. To effectively practice what we preach, and thereby honor our own humanness and well-being alongside that of the patient.