Aligning Your Healthcare Career with Your Core Values: Finding Purpose in a Challenging System
In a healthcare environment where burnout rates continue to climb and professionals face mounting pressures, understanding and aligning with your core values has never been more important. When your daily work reflects what truly matters to you, you’re more likely to find fulfillment and sustainability in your career. The Transforming Healthcare Coaching team recently explored this critical topic, offering insights for healthcare professionals seeking greater alignment between their values and their work.
Discovering Your Core Values as a Healthcare Professional
Many healthcare professionals haven’t explicitly identified their core values, making it difficult to determine if their career is properly aligned. As Lillian Liang Emlet notes, “I think for many healthcare professionals, this is a hard thing to talk about because they never have done the inner work to think about it.”
How can you begin to identify what truly matters to you? The team suggests several approaches:
Start with self-reflection: “It’s so important to have your inner world match your outer world,” Amy Bubser explains. “When you’re not aligned and something is off in your career, values can be a good place to start.”
Use existing resources: Amy suggests, “You could even do a Google search—’what are some values?’—and get a list to see what resonates with you.” Common values for healthcare professionals might include compassion, connection, service, autonomy, or excellence.
Examine your stories: Values often emerge through our lived experiences. Reflecting on significant moments in your career—both positive and challenging—can reveal what truly matters to you.
Consider intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation: “Intrinsic is really actually what gets you up in the day,” Lillian notes. For most healthcare professionals, this relates to helping others—whether through technical skills, communication, or other means.
When Values Become Clear Through Contrast
Interestingly, many healthcare professionals first become aware of their core values when they experience burnout or significant frustration. Klaus Grim shares, “I find that a lot of healthcare professionals start to become more aware of what their values are when they’re actually struggling with burnout.”
This awareness often emerges when values are violated:
- When compassionate care is compromised due to time pressures
- When professional autonomy is restricted
- When compensation doesn’t reflect contribution
- When systems prioritize metrics over meaningful care
As Klaus reflects, “A lot of the things that were the cause of my burnout were because my values were not aligned.” For him, a key value was “a serving healthcare system for both the professionals that work for it, but also the patients.”
Strategies for Aligning Your Healthcare Career with Your Core Values
Once you’ve identified your core values, how can you ensure your career aligns with them? The team offers several practical strategies:
1. Research potential employers thoroughly
“Do your homework,” Amy advises. “What did they say their values are? What’s their mission? Does that seem to align?” She suggests going beyond the official statements to “do some networking and talk to people—’What is it like for you to work at this place? How is management in that area?’—to really do your investigation.”
2. Recognize the interplay between values, mission, and culture
Lillian points out that “values for an organization may be one thing…and then also there’s culture.” She emphasizes that “culture is cultivated by the people who are within the organization, and everyone has the responsibility to craft that.”
This means that even if an organization’s stated values align with yours, the lived culture may differ. Conversely, you have the opportunity to influence culture through your own embodiment of values.
3. Communicate effectively when conflicts arise
When organizational policies or practices conflict with your personal values, “Communication. This is where it’s really important to get clear in how you feel about that situation and then talk to your supervisor,” Amy recommends.
Klaus adds that this communication should be “well thought out and [from] a space where you’re able to not act as a knee-jerk kind of reflex because leaders want something professional.”
4. Create safe spaces for authenticity
“It becomes also having a safe enough space to be authentic,” Lillian observes. “Many years ago, you wouldn’t talk about certain things related to the stressors of balancing your personal life, your hobbies, and your family. Now that’s expected…if you don’t actually have a culture where it’s okay to talk about these types of things…you’re just going to lose talent.”
5. Focus on what you can control
Klaus shares his own strategy for aligning with his value of compassionate care in a high-pressure emergency department: “Don’t go into an ER shift just trying to clear the department out as many try to push you to do. But instead, [focus on] one [patient] at a time. And enjoy that patient at that time and work on from there.”
By focusing on what he can control—giving his full attention to the patient in front of him—Klaus maintains alignment with his core values despite system pressures.
The Impact of Value Alignment on Career Satisfaction and Longevity
Value alignment significantly affects both immediate job satisfaction and long-term career sustainability. As Amy explains, “The sustainability of staying in something longer term when the issues do arise, because there are always challenges on our jobs or in our situation, but when we’re aligned with our values, we’re able to make it over those challenges easier and have a quicker bounce back.”
This alignment creates what Amy calls “that skip in your step” that makes work more engaging and fulfilling.
Lillian offers a complementary perspective: “You can be in an environment that is not aligned with you and you could definitely survive. You can thrive and you can find what it means to you in the sphere of other things you’re doing.” She suggests diversifying to find alignment in different areas of your professional life, rather than expecting complete alignment in one place.
She also emphasizes that even in challenging environments, “If you can anchor to just the little things that are still there…you can survive it to begin to find the light out.”
Maintaining Your Values in Challenging Healthcare Environments
Healthcare environments will always present challenges that test your values. How can you maintain alignment even when external circumstances are difficult?
Develop self-awareness: “Having self-awareness and being able to check in and hear the signals that are coming up to you because they’re important,” Amy suggests. This ongoing internal check allows you to recognize when your values are being compromised.
Process your experiences: “The next step after your self-awareness is debriefing with someone on a regular basis, whether that be a therapist, a mentor, an advisor, a coach, like somebody to process and reflect for yourself,” Lillian recommends. Alternatives include journaling or artistic expression.
Return to your professional identity: “When you are checking in and feeling something’s off, it’s like, ‘Oh, patient care. That is my main focus here. And I’m not able to do that here,’ recognizing it,” Amy explains. This recognition allows you to make intentional choices.
Communicate your values through action: “Part of communicating is our actions,” Amy notes. “Showing up, eye contact, letting the person know ‘I’m here for you’ and paying attention and being present…Through your actions, they can really get that you are on the job, you’re dedicated, you’re skilled, and you’re being there for them.”
The Bottom Line
Many healthcare professionals walk through their careers “unaware of the challenges that we are in,” as Klaus observes. “We know that we’re unhappy or overwhelmed or incredibly stressed, but really the awareness of what the underlying causes [are]…is often unknown to most people.”
Aligning your healthcare career with your core values begins with this awareness—understanding what truly matters to you and how it relates to your daily work. From there, you can make intentional choices about where you work, how you communicate, and where you focus your energy.
As challenging as the healthcare system can be, you maintain agency in how you approach your work. By aligning your career with your core values, you can find greater meaning, satisfaction, and sustainability, even amid difficult circumstances.
Need support in aligning your healthcare career with your core values? The Transforming Healthcare Coaching team specializes in helping healthcare professionals navigate their unique challenges. Book a discovery call to connect with a coach who understands your world.
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