Dwindling faith

“What’s burning out health care workers is less the grueling conditions we practice under, ‌and more our dwindling faith in the systems for which we work.” So writes Eric Reinhart, a physician at Northwestern University, in this piece about burnout among doctors. The big picture here—that demoralization about contributing to a broken system is a bigger issue than overwork—is one that I think applies broadly to a lot of other industries, tech among them. It’s true that too much work and too little stability is a big part of the epidemic of burnout we’re in; but people’s faith (or lack thereof) in the systems in which they work is at least an equal contributor. And just as challenging a problem to solve.