Burnout in Healthcare:
Recognizing the Signs, Busting the Myths, and Supporting Recovery

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 94: Burnout in Healthcare: Recognizing Symptoms and Implementing Solutions. Co-hosts: Klaus Grim, PA-C CPC ELI-MP, and Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP. Published February 2, 2026.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Quality and not necessarily the quantity. You can burn out doing something that you love Burnout means you're weak. It's just so ingrained in the culture that in general, it's exhibited that way. We advocate, we really coach, and help our patients so much to advocate for themselves, and yet for some reason, we barely can do it for our colleagues, and we definitely don't do it for ourselves.

Klaus Grim: Burnout is a system driven response. It's not a character flaw. It looks different from compassion fatigue, moral injury, depression, and recovery can take months and it's not a quick solution within days.

Klaus Grim: If I told you that burnout isn't about being weak, it's not fixed by a vacation, and recovery typically takes months, not days. Would that change how you think about what you're experiencing right now? Lillian. If I had told our listeners that the majority of healthcare professionals will experience burnout at some point in their career and that it's tied more to how work feels than how many hours they work, would that surprise them? And before we dive into the definitions — can you tell us what you wish every healthcare leader knew about burnout — that they're probably getting wrong?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, so I would say, it's about the quality and not necessarily the quantity. And I also will say that you can burn out doing something that you love. And so those are two huge myths for healthcare leaders about burnout. Because I think healthcare leaders often are the greatest risk for burning out. I would say that what they think they know about burnout is that it's all about leveraging time and finding efficiencies and making ways to make the electronic medical record better that really all has to do with schedule and the electronic medical record. It's not just about that.

Klaus Grim: Stay tuned. So today we're gonna talk about burnout in healthcare professionals. Not just what it is, but how to recognize it, how it differs from depression, compassion fatigue, and what actual recovery looks like. And this matters because burnout doesn't just affect clinicians, it impacts patient safety, team dynamics, and the sustainability of our entire healthcare system. And so, by the end of this conversation, you'll hopefully have language to name what you or your colleagues might be experiencing concrete early warning signs and specific ways to support someone who's struggling, whether or not time off is possible.

Klaus Grim: So Lillian, thanks for being here today. Let's set the scene. When did you first start noticing that burnout was becoming a defining issue in healthcare leadership?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I think before healthcare leadership, but just in general burnout. I probably would say it's 15 years ago when I became more interested in just, sleep, hygiene, health and wellbeing for healthcare professionals in general. And then it led naturally into burnout and the statistics, as we know have been terrible for quite a long time. But when you start to dive into the psychological journals about burnout, there actually are full journals in entire publication just about burnout. There are entire droves of psychologists and social scientists who only study burnout, you realize it's not just in the healthcare sector. Chaplains, other support and caregiving fields also have burnout. Burnout occurs in executive fields, business fields, entrepreneur fields. And so, it's really now a problem, especially for healthcare leaders, primarily because it affects the workforce, the ability for people to donate their time for either work or voluntary projects, move organizations along. And when you think about the cost to replace one nurse, one physician. It's huge. And so, you know, we've been all talking and thinking about it for a long time, but I think it really is a leadership problem first and foremost for that reason.

Klaus Grim: Yeah. Thank you for sharing. And so to remind our listeners, Lilly, you practice as a critical care ER physician, right? And what is your experience with burnout, you don't mind sharing with our audience.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So I burned out two times in my career one early one, almost getting to mid, and one was primarily related to the number of places I was asked to work and the number of shifts I think I was. At least that's why I thought at the time and that this is part of the reason why I realized one person's journey for burnout is not always the same as another person. And the fact that one person could burn out more than once within a decade also showed they were for very different reasons, as well.

Klaus Grim: Yeah. Thank you for sharing your experience and as a practicing pa I've also have experience with burnout as well during COVID Pandemic. Like many of our listeners here listening, you know, struggled with a lot of these challenges that, and I didn't even know that I was experiencing burnout. I knew I was challenged. And so a lot of the work that I needed to unfold was figuring out what burnout meant to me and figuring out how to move beyond it, and that I was at risk of this reoccurring being in the the demanding field that we're in.

Klaus Grim: So, Lillian, let's start with some definitions because I think a lot of us use these terms interchangeably. So, burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, depression, anxiety. Can you maybe break these down for us?

Lillian Liang Emlet: One thing to think about is the fact that these are all different concepts and we often are very sloppy with when we describe them. So burnout really has been tied to Maslach who initially described it, and that psychological phenomenon is only related to occupational stress and the work. And so if you are not employed, it is really hard for you to actually be burned out something else. And so the three components of burnout is emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Only related primarily to the chronic occupational stress and work related environment. And one way to sort of gauge it is that, well, you know, you still actually like hanging out with your family, or you still can have pleasure feelings when you think about vacation, or you do do other things that bring you joy, but when it comes to work, you either feel like you're too tired and don't have the emotional capacity to show up at work. that you start to treat caring for people as people are things, and it's just another case and you get really jaded. And we often have colleagues who speak that way about different situations that they incur and then reduce accomplishment, meaning that you just keep thinking what you've done is not enough. I've definitely felt that one quite a bit in my first junior faculty years. Anything I did wasn't good enough. Different from burnout is something called compassion fatigue. We also can see that people who are very empathic and very invested in their patient care can almost care too much to the point where you absorb everybody else's trauma. And so there are people who are either identify as highly sensitive individuals. If you think about a highly sensitive person is often taking in everyone's burdens and baggage and problems and really feeling them as though it is their own and almost absorbing it too much. That's compassion fatigue. Moral injury is completely different and there are complete books related. And Dr. Wendy Dean is one of the foremost healthcare moral injury, physicians where she's really described about how moral injury as, as described from the military sector where you have to do things that were against your own morals or against your own personal values. The system made you do it. Moral injury in healthcare is when the system made you do it, or this is just the way we're going to do things. And that system doesn't allow you to practice healthcare delivery in the way that you think is ethical and right, or your own personal spiritual values, personal human related values. So moral injury can occur to many people in very different ways, and that's been described across the entire interprofessional team. And then completely different from all of these is depression, right? So this is a mental illness where the inability to cope and function. And so thinking through that burnout, you can still sometimes cope and be present at work and not have performance issues and still be burned out. But depression then gets into a phase where you are pervasively crossed all life domains, not able to find any joy, meaning purpose, function. You start to have the physical and the mental manifestations of depression may become suicidal. And so mental health, this is a completely different bucket, in general compared to burnout.

Klaus Grim: Thank you for sharing those definitions with our audience. And one of the things that I think was highlighted that you came up, that you mentioned was, you know, "burnout is a workplace phenomenon". And I see so many people say, "I'm burnt out right at home." They're like, "I'm burnt out at home." And it's maybe I'm doing too chores, right? It's a completely different like definition, right? Unless that's your job, right? Is to to be housekeeping and cleaning. And I think a lot of the definitions the same weight for a lot of people and impact everybody individually and uniquely from the moral injury right to the compassion fatigue, to the burnout, depression, anxiety, all these terms, can really impact us individually. And the solution is completely unique for everybody. And as coaches, what is it that we do as coaches with helping people through some of these challenges?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I think part of it really is just being present to be able to hear people. Some degree vent and release, and then also recognize the pattern. Sometimes when you can't see the patterns yourself, when you speak them all aloud, we often reflect back and show as a mirror. What I'm hearing is in these, all these patterns. That either some symptoms of burnout or some symptoms of depression, or some symptoms of moral injury, like we put a name to it. We are able to sort of take a step back because we've heard all of these things before and we can help at least shine a little spotlight. Because I think I do remember the first time thinking that someone could label me as having burnout. You're like, "Oh. Huh." It's sort of like the first time you're like, "You have diabetes." Or "You have hypertension." There's a name to this. "Oh, then maybe there's either a treatment?" Or "I need to figure out more about these things." I think until then you just think you're just very, very stressed out and there's maybe no hope in sight and you don't know where to where to begin.

Klaus Grim: Yeah, that reflection of saying things out loud to somebody who's there to be guide on the side to just listen and solely invested in you and you know who you want to be and what awareness that you can develop as a result of, reflecting back to what you just heard. You know, what we just heard in your own words is sometimes transformational and the first step towards making some progress, not always the complete solution. We don't manage mental health conditions, but we are that support and we're willing to kind of guide you in the right direction in any way we possibly can.

Lillian Liang Emlet: You're so right because you know, awareness is the first step because if you're not aware, then you can't think about how you might change something.

Klaus Grim: And so now that we've got those kind of definitions, let's talk about maybe recognition.

Klaus Grim: What are the early warning signs that someone may be moving into some of that burnout territory?

Lillian Liang Emlet: So I think, the biggest one I often see is, you just dread showing up for your shift. You dread going into work. Or that you're the cynical one. That basically you're always the one with like a negative jab when you're doing sign out and the crotchety one, and over time you can't see it because it's happening to you, but your colleagues just perfunctorily sort of do their job with you in terms of, "Just give the bare minimum. Do what you need to do. Don't acknowledge and don't engage." Because maybe whatever your comments are, a little bit too dark, a little bit too, not positive. I also would say probably you get into a little more conflict with people. Like everybody irritates you. You're really btchy on the phone. You're not sleeping well, you eat too much, you eat too little. Those are some of the things I've seen. What kinds of things have you started to notice as early warning signs?

Klaus Grim: I think everything you just mentioned is something that I have observed. And I think when you start to see, or hear about challenges that are happening in their own life. Because one's not without the other. We spend a majority of our work and our work as healthcare workers often times follows us home. So, when we start to hear of some of the challenges that they're having home, whether with their relationships, or their health habits as you had just mentioned. That starts to be an warning sign that I sometimes see for some they recognize it or not at that moment. Everybody has to come to their own conclusions at their own time, have their own awareness. Then, I think another thing would be, some of the things that I hear often even too is just, "this is just the way it is." And I think that's a big reason why, those early warning signs are not something that are almost a warning for some people it's because it's just the way it's been. And it doesn't just because it's the way it's been, it's not the way it should be. And that we, as human beings and healthcare professionals deserve the same treatment and the same quality of life that we want for our patients.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Absolutely.

Klaus Grim: And so before we talk about recovery, I'd like to maybe bust some myths here. So what are some of the most dangerous misconceptions about burnout that you maybe hear in the hallways, or maybe some leadership meetings or some with some of your clients?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I think in some circles, there actually is a myth that still purves, that burnout means 'you're weak'. And I know that for some places that it's just so ingrained in the culture that in general, it's exhibited that way. The reality is it's an entire system of your entire life, work, personal health, entire, what we call the "Wheel of Life" or "The Thrive Wheel" that we talk about here at transforming in our group coaching program. It's that entire system. There's something not aligned. And if you can figure out what's not aligned, then maybe the burnout not only can get better, but it also may potentially be somewhat prevented because you can always recalibrate. The other myth, I really get is, fewer hours will fix it. That basically if "I'll just reduce my time, reduce my time." A lot of women do this because women have a higher rate of burnout. They often have a higher due to generalization of roles at home. Once you have children, there's many, people in partners, partnerships where even though they go home, they are also stuck with a lot of either childcare or cleaning and too many other identities and jobs to fix. You're working three jobs at the same time. So they think less clinical hours will fix it, and it's really not about the number of hours. Again, it's about alignment of what we would call the Thrive Wheel within our, in our program, it's about how work feels and meaning work, meaning how the work in any of these identities feel and how you are seeing it in your own particular lens. So whether that's being a parent or a partner, or a cleaner, or housekeeper, or chef for your family, or an athlete, or an entrepreneur, depending what your other identities are, it's not necessarily about a pure numbers game, in general. So those are two of the, some of the myths, for me. Do you have any things that you've heard that you'd want to chime in on?

Klaus Grim: Yeah, I think the things that I hear are, "Maybe you just need a vacation." How many of us also think of that ourselves, but "I just need a vacation". And maybe you do need a vacation, but right that's oftentimes not a fix. It's just a temporary fix. It doesn't't attack the root of what's going on. And so, that's that. And if I would encourage our listeners to think back themselves, how many times, maybe some of the awareness that you've just developed of maybe burnout that you've, or the struggles that you've developed, over time in your healthcare career, how many of you have taken a vacation, come back to work and said, "ah, I'm cured." I'm completely better, and it didn't come back. Those feelings, I would probably say not many. And so they actually had to take some other change or tackle some other goal to kind of figure out, what their solution could be. And so if that resonates with anybody, please share in the comments because I'd love to hear of, what did you have to do despite your vacation to be more well in your career? And

Klaus Grim: I think the other thing that I hear as well is, "You just need to be more resilient", I think. Or "you just need to suck it up almost." You just need to be like the other person." "You just need to just come to work and do your work." And how many times have you seen that be successful? It's not giving room for the person to say, "Hey, I'm really struggling with this. Can you help me figure out a solution?"

Lillian Liang Emlet: I think the most important thing you mentioning related to like, it's the individual's really resilience skills, meaning that so much of what we do focus on is what we can control. So even as coaches, we focus on about what you can control, the skills, the patterns that, so that you can thrive in some pretty hardy environments, but the data and literature is pretty clear. That's 50% individual and 50% organizational. This is the reason why chief wellness officers exist across healthcare systems because they're looking at the organizational factors, so at a systemic level, they can make greater change from the culture and the organization and the policies that is the structural problems that may be in that in the healthcare organization. Both are equal. So I think that's the greatest myth that you had comment on is basically it's up to me. You got to be just like the other person, your friend, your colleague on your team. Why can't you just be more like that other person? We're all unique, different individuals, and we interact with the system and we all have different lives. So I think it's always about like taking that step back and seeing how we interact with our lives, interact with the healthcare organization specifically, and figuring out how you can partner together to find policies and small group rules within your group that can work for you.

Klaus Grim: Yeah. I like how you said that, that burnout solutions are not solely individualized that they require organizational involvement as well, to be a true kind of burnout solution. And so, but I always tell people you're only at agency to change who you are and who you wanna show up to be. And that's always the first step is, you know, taking the right steps for you. How many of us advocate for our patients and say, "Though I recommend you follow up with that person, I want you to call despite they said they would call you." I always tell my patients that. I said, "Despite them being aware about you, and it's not saying they're not going to call you, but I want you to remember to take care of yourself and call as well, and make sure that you know, you're following through on what it is that you want and what you need."

Lillian Liang Emlet: That's the greatest truth bomb right there. We advocate, we really coach and help our patients so much to advocate for themselves, and yet for some reason, we barely can do it for our colleagues, and we definitely don't do it for ourselves. And so I think that's super interesting that you comment on that, that we have the ability to do so, but for some reason we look inward. We don't see, it's hard to see the ability to make that advocacy come to life.

Klaus Grim: Exactly. So let's talk about the path forward here.

Klaus Grim: What does actually look like and how can colleagues and leaders support someone without making things worse?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I think the biggest thing is finding a safe place that's actually okay to talk about it. And to have, I mean, if you can think about ... if your boss had your back, it would mean not reducing time, not taking a pay cut, not getting demoted, not getting projects removed from you, and instead support meaning coaching — EAP, therapy, modification of work structure, autonomy choices. Some flexibility for a defined period of time. For example, I think one of the most biggest things that people have, you know, they're dealing with, for example, another new stress in their life is that there's a caregiving issue with their elder parent or their child, and they have to also juggle their work schedule and they just can't. They are literally, they can't do it. So do a time limited trial with this particular team member doesn't mean forever. You're changing the entire workforce policies for your entire. Organization just in this example for six months. Give them the grace and what's needed as a team, as a group to readjust night shifts only or daytime only to get them through the hump and not demote them off of all of their leadership positions. Because that often knows what happens too, when it's mismanaged. They're like, "Oh, lemme just take everything off your plate. Let me delegate it all away." And I can tell you on the other side of recovering from burnout, eight months later. People are like, "Oh, I'm different now," but mostly different 'cause I actually don't have any more responsibilities. And who am I? And now you, now you have a different problem where you've literally taken someone off their career trajectory. So as a talent manager, as a leader, "What have you really done in solving this person's burnout?" It's really about trying to find creative solutions and really checking in and supporting them and saying that, let, we will find a way, let's maybe but then I think the employee, I mean like the person in the group also has to do due diligence and actually rest and not fill their time up with other things that can burn them out and also do self-care things and do the, I mean, they do have to do all of the other individual things, but I do think the team needs to think about more creatively rather than just removing things.

Klaus Grim: What I'm hearing is of telling somebody what to do and doing it for them of what you think is best for them, be curious. Be creative. Be supportive to a member of your team by whether that be encouraging them to follow through with an EAP — Therapy coaching or looking for an external coach. We have bias here, but both of us have coaches and have sometimes it's easier to talk to somebody who's not internal. And so, these are ways of support that can really allow somebody to open up and say, "Maybe they're just not aware?" And or maybe you as a leader can just ask some of these hard open-ended questions that us coaches are not afraid to ask. "What's going on with you? How can I support you?"

Lillian Liang Emlet: It's funny you say that because I do think for some of the leaders that we coach that often it comes up, we're like, "Let me channel you in that moment." And often many of our clients do ask about some basic coach training so that they can develop coaching type skills within their own practice. So I think educators, leaders definitely need to take some basic training in coaching skills because it's so useful to weave into your management practice. It's not just about like why I just described, let me tell and you summarized so well is the boss mentality like, "I'm just gonna execute like what needs to happen." And it's also not the mentor activity either, where like, because you can only advocate for like what you know, and if you don't know other things in the toolbox, you don't have a big toolbox, then you yourself can't help the person, right? If your only way of coping is music and this person needs art or writing or something else or therapy and you don't know how to do that, then it's gonna be hard for them to able to follow your particular guidance.

Klaus Grim: Yeah. So sounds like we have one thing our healthcare leaders who are listening today can do, and it's just asking an open-ended question to your team member that you find could use some support. So, Lillian, if someone's listening and thinking, "I need to have a conversation with my team" or a team member as we just talked about, or I think I might be experiencing this myself, and some of the signs of burnout and early warning signs, what's the first step?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I would say you have to name it to tame it, right? Just like emotions. You have to be able to recognize that it's happening. And if you are worried and wondering, you can take the Maslach Burnout inventory or look for burnout screens online. And for depression, there's actually different screens for looking at depression symptoms, but burnout, you have to do a burnout screen. That's one thing. I think the other thing too is just. Start talking with a friend, like someone who's either in healthcare, adjacent to it. Call your EAP most will just give you a screening call and, or free appointment with a therapist because you can ask that person potentially, even though it's not therapy, you can at least ask that person if these symptoms could be consistent with burnout and then maybe it's not depression at all.

Klaus Grim: Yeah, so the first step I'm hearing is. Say it out loud to somebody. Reach out to somebody. Reach out to a resource that we many of us have that just don't use or maybe not know how to use. If you are a frontline professional and saying, "Can you help me maybe navigate some of these resources, maybe a good first step." And so Lily, if you're a healthcare leader who's listening and wants to support their teams or themselves navigating some of these conversations, or just ultimately building a team culture where burnout is recognized and addressed early, where should they go? What should they do?

Lillian Liang Emlet: You can always continue the conversation with any of us here at Transforming. We, I'm mostly active on LinkedIn and happy to begin just to have a conversation or just. Pick my brain. Just book a call and we'll chat and sort of think through like what your unique challenges might be. We do work with individuals, groups, and teams, and so it depends on what the culture and the problem is potentially with your organization. And sometimes you just need a different person just to talk with, just to get a little bit of clarity. So we at Transforming work with healthcare leaders on building sustainable practices and supporting high performing teams. Before things happen and to try to prevent, people from all burning out and having issues with your workflow teams.

Klaus Grim: Yeah, so reach out to Lillian on LinkedIn, Lillian Liang Emlet, or in the description you'll see a link to book a clarity call or a strategy call with one of us and so we can just be a voice and hear things out.

Klaus Grim: And so just to recap, you know, burnout is a system driven response. It's not a character flaw. It looks different from compassion, fatigue, moral injury, depression, and recovery can take months and it's not a quick solution within days and colleagues and a friend, can be a very powerful protective factor through simple, concrete support and behaviors, you'd like to add?

Lillian Liang Emlet: Oh, just thanks for opening the conversation and really trying to drill down really what does it look like, because I think it's much more prevalent than we would like to admit, and I think even if you just take one small step and check in with your team. You'd be surprised that there's a lot bubbling underneath the surface for all of us, including us as a leader. So that means finding other leaders, finding other people you can trust. You, yourself should just check in and see where you're, where you are today.

Klaus Grim: You aren't alone. We're here. There's support where you need it, and if you need someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out. So thank you Lillian, for joining us on this episode, and we'll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening. If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe and share with a colleague who would benefit. Together. We can transform healthcare one person at a time. Find us anywhere you find your podcasts ready to take your healthcare leadership journey to the next level. Book a discovery call free@transforminghealthcarecoaching.com to explore our personalized coaching packages designed specifically for healthcare professionals like you.