There is widespread concern across the US about the high incidence of burnout among healthcare workers. This situation could result in fewer healthcare workers being available to take care of an increasingly aging and ill population.

In 2021, the Surgeon General released a report titled "Addressing Healthcare Workforce Burnout." The Surgeon General also was featured on a Dr. Glaucomflecken video webcast (which has over 750,000 subscribers, mostly healthcare professionals) about how the Federal Government is working to improve the well-being of healthcare workers.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has indicated that there could be an urgent need for 1.1 million new nurses by the end of 2022. Many burnout experts believe that professional environment and work culture form the major sources of healthcare workers' burnout. In 2022, Congress passed the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act. The Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services to award grants to hospitals and other healthcare entities for programs to promote mental health and resiliency among healthcare providers. But what programs should hospitals implement?

A new study suggests CANDOR programs could help hospitals improve staff's well-being, and hopefully increase the number of staff who stay on at their medical facility. To the extent that CANDOR programs do this, there is some new hope for improving access to future care. The study was published in JAMA Network Open by Health Economist Andrew Friedson and coauthors.

CANDOR is a patient safety, medical liability, and healthcare professional wellness program designed for when patients suffer an unexpected bad outcome. CANDOR's basic premise emphasizes honesty in medical error situations. Hospitals establish a peer support group to counsel healthcare providers when their patient suffers a bad outcome. Studies have found evidence suggesting that, compared to the common US practice "Deny, Delay, and Defend," using CANDOR not only benefits current and future patients but also improves the well-being of healthcare professionals.

In this study, the authors found that there was an association between CANDOR implementation and workers feeling more confident in hospital leadership and feeling more likely to still be working in the hospital in the future.

Dr Tim McDonald, one of the architects of the CANDOR Toolkit and Chief Patient Safety and Risk Officer at RLDatix states, "We are very pleased to see the data from Friedson et al. that demonstrates improvement in healthcare professional perceptions of workplace satisfaction and trust in hospital leadership associated with the application of CANDOR principles. This offers hope that CANDOR may be one of the solutions to help address the unprecedented HCP burnout we are currently experiencing."

Andrew Friedson concludes, "CANDOR programs may be fertile ground for improving worker satisfaction and with it, hopefully, retention. It may not be enough for healthcare workers to take pride in their work. They may be more likely to stay when they can also take pride in how their institution handles itself."