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Doctors and nurses seldom learn in school how to tell a family that their loved one is not going to survive. Yet health care professionals face the immense burden of tragedy, illness and dying in an intensely stressful setting as a routine, ongoing part of their jobs.<\/p>\n
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, research was\u00a0documenting rampant stress and burnout<\/a>\u00a0among health care professionals.<\/p>\n The effects of this\u00a0crisis are widespread<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. In 2022, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy raised concerns about the\u00a0alarming levels of burnout in the health care community<\/a>\u00a0in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Studies show that if current trends continue, the U.S. will see a shortage of 1.1 million registered nurses, 3 million other health care workers and\u00a0over 140,000 physicians by 2033<\/a>. A 2022 Mayo Clinic study reported that only 58% of physicians\u00a0would choose to become a doctor again<\/a>\u00a0if offered a chance to revisit their career choice, dropping from 72% from just one year before.<\/p>\n For nearly two decades,\u00a0our research group<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a team of physicians, researchers, creative arts therapists and writers \u2013 has focused on understanding the impact of work-related stress on health care workers. In our experience, almost every health care worker has a story about navigating the times when the weight of the profession is just too much to bear.<\/p>\n To help address this issue, in 2019, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, our team established the Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab, or CORAL. Our aim is to use creative arts therapy as an intervention to improve the well-being of health care professionals and to restore their sense of purpose in these demanding work environments.<\/p>\n As physicians who have\u00a0worked in critical care<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0emergency medicine<\/a>\u00a0for many years, we think that this incorporation of creativity in health care is vital. The nation\u2019s health depends on the well-being of the health care workforce. We believe that incorporating creativity and the arts as a tool for building resiliency in health care workers could help shift the culture of emotional isolation that health care workers live in.<\/p>\n We as health care workers push ourselves to the limits to learn new ways to enhance human health. The irony is that this often comes at the expense of our own physical, emotional and mental health. We learn to mask emotions and internalize all the negative events we see in health care. But that is unsustainable.<\/p>\n In the 2000s, up to 80% of critical care nurses\u00a0reported experiencing burnout or other forms of psychological distress<\/a>. This was contributing to a high turnover rate, with 67% of nurses planning to\u00a0leave their positions within three years<\/a>. That was leading to a rise in health care costs,\u00a0compassion fatigue among workers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0diminished quality of care<\/a>\u00a0for patients.<\/p>\n Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which intensified the stress on health care workers:\u00a03 in 5 physicians reported burnout<\/a>\u00a0during the height of the omicron variant in 2022.<\/p>\n A combination of higher job demands, workload, job complexity, job pressure and intensive working time during the COVID\u201019 pandemic increased stress among health care professionals and\u00a0led to emotional exhaustion<\/a>.<\/p>\n Satisfaction with work-life balance dropped from\u00a046.1% in 2020 to 30.2% in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the post-COVID-19 era, health care workers like us are at higher risk for\u00a0anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder<\/a>. Burned-out health care professionals are\u00a0unlikely to seek professional treatment<\/a>\u00a0and, as a result, tend to experience heightened levels of substance use, depression and suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n A researcher\u2019s view on impostor syndrome and the culture of not showing your feelings. CORAL<\/p><\/div>\n In ancient Greece and Rome,\u00a0participation in the arts was \u201cprescribed\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for people with depression or anxiety. Likewise, for centuries, tribal communities have used dance, music and art\u00a0to facilitate physical and mental healing<\/a>\u00a0in individuals.<\/p>\n Our focus at CORAL has been on teaching health care workers how to use art-making to effectively process trauma and develop coping mechanisms through expression and community. We invite our participants, who include doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists and researchers, to tap into their authentic vulnerabilities and share stories they would not normally tell by using pen and paper, paintbrushes, guitars, songwriting and movement.<\/p>\nA challenge long in coming<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Art as a way forward<\/strong><\/h4>\n