When you hear the word resilience paired with nurses, what’s your first reaction? If you feel triggered, annoyed, or even angry, you’re not alone. The message that nurses should just "be more resilient"—often backed by suggestions like taking a bubble bath or doing yoga—has become a frustrating, tone-deaf response to nurse burnout and chronic system strain.
Let me say this loud and clear: burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a systems problem. And to fix it, we need to move beyond bubble bath solutions and start talking about system resilience and workplace resilience—the kind that addresses nurse wellbeing through sustainable, long-term solutions.
Why Burnout Isn’t Just About You (And Never Was)
Nurses are often told that self-care will solve everything. While self-care does play a role in personal resilience, it doesn’t address the core issue: an overstretched healthcare system with unsustainable demands.
Our healthcare system has been running at max capacity for years, and it’s only getting worse. We’re facing staffing shortages, an aging patient population, and reduced public health funding. The system is being pushed past its limits, and nurses are bearing the brunt.
If resilience is framed solely as your responsibility, the burden falls on you to “tough it out” in an environment that isn’t designed to support you. That’s absurd. Instead, let’s redefine resilience to include both individual and systemic solutions.
The Seesaw of Efficiency and Resilience: Why Balance Is Critical
Imagine resilience and efficiency as opposite ends of a seesaw. When a healthcare organization swings too far toward efficiency, it creates a fragile system with no room for error. Nurses are maxed out, beds are full, and any unexpected event—whether it’s a multi-car accident or just an influx of patients—can tip the system into chaos.
On the flip side, 100% resilience would be inefficient. If we staffed and stocked every hospital for worst-case scenarios, we’d waste resources and drive up costs.
The goal is balance. A resilient healthcare system can handle unexpected events without pushing staff or resources to their breaking points.
Right now, we’ve overcorrected toward efficiency. And it’s causing long-term damage.
The Real Cost of Over-Efficiency in Healthcare
When organizations prioritize short-term fixes over long-term system resilience, they create a cycle of crisis management. Here’s what that looks like:
Over-reliance on overtime: Staff burnout skyrockets because overtime is used as a Band-Aid to cover gaps.
Delayed patient care: Without redundancy or backup systems, even minor disruptions can cause cascading delays.
Staff turnover: Overworked and undervalued nurses leave, exacerbating shortages.
This cycle is unsustainable. We need healthcare leaders who understand that nurse wellbeing and workplace resilience are intertwined with systemic solutions—not just individual coping mechanisms.
4 Practical Steps to Advocate for System Resilience
Ready to start shifting the conversation from personal resilience to systemic change? Here are four actions you can take:
1. Make System Observations, Not Personal Complaints
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s natural to vent about how tired or frustrated you are. But to create change, frame your experiences as system observations:
Personal complaint: “I’m so exhausted because I’ve been called in every day this week.”
System observation: “Our unit is over-relying on overtime to meet basic staffing needs, and I’m concerned about the long-term impact on both staff and patient safety.”
This approach reframes the issue as a pattern that leaders need to address, rather than a one-off complaint.
2. Identify Patterns of Over-Efficiency
Look for recurring situations where resources are being stretched too thin. For example:
Are you constantly short on equipment like wheelchairs during high-traffic times?
Is your team regularly working at or beyond capacity without any downtime?
These are signs of a system that’s over-prioritizing efficiency at the expense of resilience.
3. Document and Raise Awareness of Slow-Burn Problems
Not all crises happen overnight. Staffing shortages, delayed care, and rising workloads often build slowly. Don’t wait until things hit a breaking point—document the patterns you’re seeing and bring them to your leaders’ attention.
Tip: Consistently document issues via email or reports to your manager, showing trends over time. This builds a case for change and prevents your concerns from being dismissed as isolated incidents.
4. Speak the Language of Systems to Your Leaders
Many healthcare leaders haven’t been trained in systems thinking, but you can help bridge that gap by framing resilience as a systems problem with long-term costs.
Use terms like “systems care” and highlight potential solutions, such as better staffing models, flexible workflows, and built-in redundancies.
When presenting issues, pair them with actionable suggestions. For example: “I’ve noticed delays in patient care due to a lack of backup resources. Could we explore creating a contingency plan for high-volume days?”
We Need Both Personal and Systemic Resilience
I want to be clear—I’m not dismissing the value of personal resilience. Monitoring your capacity, building strategic tools to manage overwhelm, navigating roadblocks, and adjusting to disappointment are all critical skills. That’s exactly what we focus on in Change Maker Essentials. But individual resilience can only go so far when the system you’re working in isn’t built to support you.
That’s why we also explore creating resilient workplaces. Because while personal growth is important, real change happens when organizations take responsibility for building resilience into their systems.
Moving Beyond Short-Term Fixes: The Case for Long-Term System Resilience
Healthcare systems are great at responding to acute crises, like pandemics or mass casualty events. But they’re often terrible at addressing slower, more insidious problems, like chronic staffing shortages or rising workloads.
Just as we need long-term care plans for patients with chronic conditions, we need long-term operational plans to build system resilience. This means looking ahead, identifying potential challenges, and addressing them before they become crises.
Final Thoughts: Reframing Resilience as a Shared Responsibility
Burnout isn’t a sign of personal failure. It’s a symptom of a system that’s out of balance. Yes, we need to protect our personal resilience, but we also need to advocate for systems that don’t require us to burn out in the first place.
If you’ve tried advocating for change and hit a wall, it’s okay to walk away. Protecting your nurse wellbeing sometimes means finding an environment that values both you and the patients you care for.
But if you’re in a place where change is possible, start by implementing the four practical steps we discussed. Every small action you take can help shift the system toward balance.
For more systems-level strategies, check out my other blog posts (or listen to them on the Nursing the System Podcast). If you’re ready for weekly lessons and frameworks from my day-to-day as a nurse leader in the health innovation space, join my email list here. Let’s keep building stronger, more resilient systems together.
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