Clinical burnout for nurses and physicians is no longer an abstract workplace issue. It is a measurable, lived reality. Up to 61% of nurses report feeling burnout as a constant, not a temporary state [1]. It is frustrating because behind these statistics are real people who chose a noble profession to help others. And what they got in return is overstimulation, detachment, and disrespect.That’s why nurses should be prepared and informed about their rights. This article explores the causes of nurse burnout and how to prevent it with small daily interventions.
Nurse Burnout Is a Real Issue
Nurse burnout has all the characteristics of a typical burnout: sleep issues, (emotional) exhaustion, lack of energy, motivation, and enjoyment. However, for medical workers, burnout is also linked to professional pitfalls and weaknesses in the healthcare system.
One characteristic that distinguishes nursing burnout is its significant disruption of work or professional fulfillment. When burnout intensifies, it can impact:
- The ability to do your job, increasing the risk of medical errors.
- Patient communication.
- Team collaboration.
- Personal health, including sleep disturbances, headaches, gastrointestinal issues, and weakened immunity.
- Personal life.
The shared workplace factors seen among burned-out nurses and physicians are that they work over 40 hours a week (3x higher burnout risk) and their workplaces aren’t sufficiently staffed (63% of nurses-leavers named this as a reason for quitting) [2].
How does nursing burnout show up in hospital/clinical settings? Common signs of burnout in nurses include:
- Chronic exhaustion that does not improve with rest.
- Emotional detachment from patients.
- Depersonalization (doing things on autopilot).
- Increased mistakes or difficulty concentrating.
- Irritability toward colleagues or people from their personal circle.
- Feeling ineffective despite working harder than ever.
- Comparison to other nurses/professions.
- Thoughts about quitting.
5 Causes of Burnout in Nurses
Nurse burnout develops from a complexity of professional and personal factors. The causes below are reported to be the most common, but consider your personal stressors, such as emotionally intense personal events, diseases, the political landscape, hobbies, etc., as potential contributors. It’s all on an individual level.
1. Mental Health Strain and Neurodivergence
Nurses are people who tend to experience mental health symptoms or have neurodivergent traits. Lack of rest and emotional processing, chronic exhaustion, and stressful work environments can contribute to anxiety, depression, or neurodivergent burnout.
The nurses with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, OCD, etc., experience burnout twice as often as their neurotypical colleagues [3]. One way to find out whether you have neurodivergent traits is to complete the “Am I neurodivergent?” quiz and then confirm/refute the findings with a mental health professional. Knowing your unique sensory needs may be especially helpful in planning and preparing for shifts.
A recent study from South Africa found that 16% and an astonishing 56% of healthcare practitioners demonstrate high clinical symptoms of depression and anxiety, respectively [4]. This proves, once again, that the mental health of nurses is a systemic problem.
2. Staffing Shortages
High patient-to-nurse ratios remain one of the most significant predictors of nurse burnout. It’s also the reason why nurses leave the profession, with over 60% of quitters naming understaffing as a primary reason [2]. When staffing levels are inadequate, nurses carry heavier workloads, skip breaks, and extend shifts.
3. Unrecognized Emotional Labor
Nursing requires sustained empathy, which is rarely even recognized. Fulfilling medical needs is not enough. Healthcare workers should also provide reassurance to distressed families, support patients through pain, and maintain composure during emergencies, among other tasks. Emotional depletion can turn into detachment as a body’s survival strategy.
4. Administrative Burden
Another responsibility of nurses that is overlooked is their administrative work. Work with health records and insurance consumes hours of cognitive energy while seemingly having “no effect.” Many nurses report spending more time charting than actually working with patients. This disconnects medical workers from their professional values and creates dissatisfaction with their profession.
5. Workplace Culture
Nurses are sometimes dismissed as “low-tier” healthcare workers. While they complete most of the patient and administrative work, they cannot make decisions about their own work due to traditional hierarchical systems. Decisions are made by people who are never in the field, making nurses and physicians feel unheard or undervalued.
How to Prevent Nurse Burnout as a Nurse
Prioritize Physical Well-being
Burnout recovery begins with physical well-being. When the body is depleted, there is no energy to use. Although this is one of the cheesiest pieces of advice, a healthy lifestyle is the first thing you should focus on if you’re a nurse with burnout.
- Start with sleep protection whenever possible. If you rotate shifts, that’s a must. Dim lights, limit screens, and give your brain a signal that it’s going to sleep now. Try to practice it (in)consistently for 20 to 30 minutes.
- Nutrition also matters. Skipping meals may feel unavoidable during busy shifts, which is the reason for heightened irritability and brain fog. Keep simple, portable options available. Eating something is always better than eating nothing.
- Movement is a must. Although nursing work is already physically challenging, it’s not a workout where you can turn your head off. A brisk walk after a shift, stretching between rounds, or stepping outside for five minutes of fresh air can help your nervous system reset.
Redefine Self-Care as a Non-Negotiable
Self-care is not spa days or tracking your habits. Both are good if you enjoy them. Self-care is something you deeply love and feel drawn to doing.
Ask yourself what genuinely restores you. It might be something as simple as extra sleep without guilt. It might be reading a book that has nothing to do with medicine. It might be meeting a friend.
Micro-recovery also matters. Take 10-minute breaks every hour or two at work. It is advisable that these breaks are screen-free, but try your best and don’t feel guilty for wanting to scroll on TikTok during your pause.
Protect Your Workload Boundaries
Healthcare culture is designed to reward self-sacrifice, which is a good thing to do since your job involves saving lives. But in this pursuit of nobleness and, sometimes, money, nurses forget that they are people too.
What you should consider not doing is taking on extra shifts, helping additional patients, or helping out with colleagues’ responsibilities. If you are already feeling depleted, consider whether taking on overtime is truly necessary. Saying no to an extra shift is an act of professional sustainability so that you can work longer and with higher quality in the future.
Burnout prevention is a part of your job. If it means doing less work one day, it’s a responsible thing to do.
Speak Up Safely
Many nurses hesitate to report burnout because of a valid reason: they won’t be taken seriously. Yet unaddressed burnout may compromise both the well-being of a nurse and patient care.
Consider initiating a conversation with a supervisor about workload or how they can support you. Frame the discussion around sustainability and patient safety rather than personal failure. Of course, this only works if you have an understanding management. Otherwise, such conversations should be escalated.
If direct reporting feels unsafe, seek peer support or mentorship. Sometimes validation from a colleague can reduce isolation and make you feel better about your capabilities.
Speaking up does not guarantee immediate change. However, voicing concerns is an act of service you do for the entire nursehood and the newer generations of physicians.
Use Nurse Burnout Prevention Programs
Many healthcare systems now recognize clinical burnout as a systemic issue and offer structured prevention programs. The most common interventions are peer support groups, employee assistance programs (EAPs), confidential counseling, or resilience workshops.
However, there are also specialized nurse burnout prevention programs you can apply to. These sources often offer or spread information about them:
- American Nurses Association
- National Nurses United
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners
- Nursing Center for Excellence
- The American Organization for Nursing Leadership
If accessible, consider short-term therapy focused on stress processing and boundary-setting. A therapist familiar with healthcare environments may help untangle beliefs such as “I have to carry everything myself” or “Rest means I’m not dedicated.”
Nurse Burnout Requires Systematic Intervention
Individual coping strategies matter. As in every profession, there are industry-specific challenges. Yet clinical burnout for nurses is not simply a personal resilience issue. No amount of breathing exercises can compensate for systematic issues in the nursing field. Healthcare systems that expect constant overextension create a precedent that is currently in action: nurses routinely manage more patients than is clinically reasonable, skip breaks, and shoulder administrative burdens without adequate compensation. Burnout becomes inevitable under such conditions. Asking individuals to “self-care” within unsustainable systems shifts responsibility away from institutions. Systematic intervention requires measurable change.
Organizations that advocate for nursing rights have well-developed bills and strategies that include reducing patient-to-nurse ratios, attracting younger professionals into nursing careers through scholarships, offering fair compensation, and transparent scheduling policies. Workplace culture must also evolve. Psychological safety, respectful interdisciplinary communication, and leadership accountability are musts and depend on leaders to be empathetic and reasonable.
Sources (Accessed February 2026):
- A descriptive analysis of nurses’ self-reported mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international study. International Nursing Review. January 2025. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/inr.13099
- Prevalence of and Factors Associated With Nurse Burnout in the US. JAMA Network Open. February 2021. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7862989/
- Global Benefits Attitudes Survey 2022. Willis Towers Watson. January 2022. https://www.wtwco.com/en-ch/insights/trending-topics/global-benefits-attitudes-survey-2022
- Factors associated with depression and anxiety among mental healthcare practitioners. Journal of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa. February 2025. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12423989/
