Healthcare worker burnout can be difficult to recognize. With a growing workload and unrealistic timelines, medical librarians are the latest professionals to find themselves in need of personal coping strategies and organizational support.
The evolving role of medical librarians brings new pressures
Healthcare worker burnout has been a top concern for healthcare organizations and professionals in recent years, as overworked, overwhelmed caregivers report feeling underappreciated and resign in record numbers.
When discussing healthcare burnout, many people conjure an image of nurses – who report some of the highest rates of feeling clinical professional stress – or other frontline caregivers. What we might not realize is that medical librarians are also under increasing stress, which often leads to burnout.
Medical librarians play a crucial, if largely unseen, role in ensuring high-quality clinical care. They identify and provide current, accurate, useful medical information for care teams to use in supporting appropriate patient care decisions. The need for experienced medical librarians to identify, access, and disseminate medical information is more critical than ever, as the volume of medical data is estimated to grow 36% year-over-year through 2025.
With that growing need has come a growing pressure.