Many people have become “burned out” on the word burnout. Many doctors do not resonate with the term, feeling it describes personal struggles, when systemic issues are the root cause of the challenges facing health care professionals. They offer “moral injury” as a more accurate description. Clinicians can experience either or both at any time during their career.

Recently speaking with Shari Morin-Degel, I appreciated her sharing that because she had not learned how to process secondary trauma as a mental health professional, she expected others to just “deal with it” too when she moved into leadership. We discussed what helped her personally, and how she came to understand that leadership transformation and supporting teams are both critical in preventing burnout. Shari says transformation does not start with tools or systems, it starts with leaders buying in!

Shari Morin-Degel:

Burnout has become one of the defining challenges of our time. Health care workers, educators, and human-service professionals, those who dedicate their lives to supporting others are among the most at risk. While some still treat burnout as a personal flaw or weakness, the truth is far more complex. Burnout is not a failure of character; it is a signal that something in the system needs to change.

I know this truth both professionally and personally. As a licensed professional counselor and nonprofit leader for more than fifteen years, I experienced the cost of burnout firsthand both in myself and in those I supervised. That journey led me to create My Work BALANCE, a digital burnout prevention solution that helps individuals and organizations not just recognize burnout but prevent it.

Burnout is preventable

Early in my career as a mental health professional, I worked with children who had endured abuse and neglect. I was completely unprepared for the level of trauma I would witness. I saw children pulled from unsafe homes, terrified and traumatized by the very process meant to protect them. I worked with teenagers aging out of care and dropping straight into homelessness. I placed children in emotionally abusive situations because their treatment was not covered by insurance. Every heartbreaking decision left its mark.

Over time, these stories, combined with systemic limitations, began to wear me down. When I moved into leadership, I carried those scars forward and expected others to carry theirs as well. After more than a decade of pushing through secondary trauma without processing it, two massive challenges hit: implementing a new electronic medical record system and undergoing a licensing audit so intense it threatened the future of the organization.

That is when I broke. I became angry, hopeless, and emotionally drained. For the first time, I truly understood what it meant to “lose your faith.”

My recovery did not come from a sabbatical or resignation. It came from developing self-care and boundary-setting skills. My recovery started with close friends and horses. For three months, every Saturday, we loaded our horses into a trailer and headed into the woods. Those weekends reminded me of what was still good in the world. They retaught me the essentials of well-being: taking the time to fill my cup.

The lesson was clear: Burnout can be prevented. But it requires more than telling people to “be resilient.” I had to make changes, and as a leader, I needed to become a better role model for others.

Access, support, and visible norms

When Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services awarded us an innovation grant, we had the opportunity to implement My Work BALANCE in several organizations. We set a modest benchmark of 20 percent employee engagement with the app. What we saw was striking:

• In organizations where leadership introduced the app, explained its purpose, and gave employees just ten minutes of work time to complete the assessments, engagement soared to 80 percent in the first month.
• In organizations where leadership did not model or support participation, engagement plummeted.

The difference was not the tool: It was the culture.

This aligns with research published in 2024 by Dolores Albarracín, Bita Fayaz-Farkhad, and Javier A. Granados Samayoa at the University of Pennsylvania, who found that behavior change hinges on three conditions: access, social support, and visible behavioral norms. If organizations send email notices about wellness, but do not facilitate access for authentic connections, moments of mindfulness, support for secondary trauma, or empowering agency, nothing changes. People do not follow slogans; they follow what is modeled, supported, and made possible.

Our project confirmed this: Tools alone are insufficient. Leadership buy-in and cultural alignment are the linchpins of sustainable burnout prevention.

Leadership transformation is the key.

My own leadership transformation began when I learned to recognize burnout in myself. Only then could I see it clearly in others. Once I believed that burnout was both preventable and less costly than turnover, health care expenses, and disengagement, I committed to changing my leadership, not just my workload.

That shift meant embracing a new vision: burnout prevention was not simply the right thing; it was the sustainable thing. I began listening with greater empathy and flexibility. I respected others’ need for autonomy. I balanced productivity expectations with the human realities of the work. I created space for teams to reflect on the emotional toll of their roles.

What I discovered is this: True transformation does not begin with systems or apps. It begins with leaders who are willing to buy in. Once leaders shift, they can invite others into a shared vision and that is when culture change becomes possible.

Toward a balanced future

Burnout prevention is not a one-time initiative. It is a sustained commitment that requires both organizational change and personal practice. Individuals can learn skills that build resilience. But without access, support, and visible norms from leadership, those skills will either wither, or those people will leave.

As someone who has lived burnout and built recovery, I can say with certainty: Prevention is possible but only if we commit to shared responsibility. Together, leaders and teams can build workplaces where people not only survive but thrive.

Shari Morin-Degel is a counselor. Kim Downey is a physician advocate and physical therapist.