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Healthcare Worker Burnout in 2026: The Full Picture

ByAnnabelle Hays

Physician and nurse burnout make the headlines. But is that really the full picture of healthcare burnout?

Reviewed by the clinical team at Gladstone Wellness

We are often shown, whether through the news or through casual conversation, that burnout in healthcare is primarily a physician’s problem, or perhaps a nurse’s problem. However, is this truly the full picture? And what happens to the pharmacists, respiratory therapists, paramedics, and behavioral health counselors who make up the rest of the healthcare workforce?

If you work in healthcare but are not a physician or a nurse, most of what gets published about burnout likely doesn’t mention you at all. This is not, we would argue, because your experience is any less real. Rather, it appears to be because the research infrastructure tracking burnout has, for the most part, pointed at only two professions. As mental healthcare providers, we see a considerably wider crisis in our own practice — one in which several non-physician, non-nursing roles report burnout at rates that meet, and in some cases exceed, what has been recorded among physicians.

What We Already Know: Physicians and Nurses

The American Medical Association, in partnership with Mayo Clinic and Stanford Medicine, has tracked physician burnout since 2011 through the Mayo Clinic Proceedings survey series. As the table below shows, the trend has fluctuated considerably over the past decade or so:

YearPhysicians reporting ≥1 burnout symptom
201145.5%
201454.4%
201743.9%
202038.2%
2021 (pandemic peak)62.8%
2023 (most recent)45.2%

Nurse burnout tells a somewhat similar, if more mixed, story. A 2023 PRC National Nursing Engagement Report found that 15.6% of nurses reported burnout overall, a figure that rose sharply to 41% among nurses who described themselves as “unengaged” at work. Importantly, the consequences of this appear to extend to patients as well: a 2024 meta-analysis in JAMA Network Open, drawing on 85 studies and more than 288,000 nurses across 32 countries, linked nurse burnout to higher infection rates, more falls, more medication errors, and lower patient satisfaction scores overall.

These figures are, without question, serious. However, taken on their own, they still represent an incomplete picture of healthcare burnout as a whole.

The Workforce Nobody’s Writing About

Pharmacists. A national survey of hematology-oncology pharmacists, published in JCO Oncology Practice in 2022, found that 61.8% reported high burnout on the Maslach Burnout Inventory — notably higher than the physician figures cited above. Burned-out pharmacists in this sample also reported more self-reported medication errors (27.6% compared to 8.1% among their non-burned-out peers) and a considerably higher intent to leave the profession within two years (60.3% compared to 19.0%).

Respiratory therapists. Research published in Respiratory Care in 2023 found that burnout among respiratory therapists ran as high as 79% — a figure that seems worth pausing on, given how essential this role became during recent respiratory illness surges.

EMS providers and paramedics. A 2023 survey covered in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services found that almost 90% of EMS providers screened positive for burnout, among the highest rates recorded in any healthcare role to date.

Medical assistants and social workers. A national cross-sectional survey published in EClinicalMedicine in 2021 found that stress scores were, somewhat surprisingly, highest not among physicians but among nursing assistants, medical assistants, and social workers. Overall, 49% of healthcare workers surveyed reported burnout, a figure that spans the entire workforce rather than only clinicians holding medical degrees.

Healthcare RoleReported Burnout RateSource
EMS providers / paramedics~90% screened positiveJEMS, 2023
Respiratory therapistsUp to 79%Respiratory Care, 2023
Hematology-oncology pharmacists61.8%JCO Oncology Practice, 2022
Physicians45.2% (2023)AMA / Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Healthcare workers overall (all roles)49%EClinicalMedicine, 2021
Nurses (engaged vs. unengaged)15.6% / 41%PRC National Nursing Engagement Report, 2023

Why This Gets Missed

First, the data infrastructure itself is uneven. Non-physician, non-nursing roles tend to have less research funding, fewer professional associations tracking annual burnout data, and considerably less media attention — not, it seems, because they experience less burnout.

Second, the underlying causes appear to be systemic rather than role-specific. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2022 Advisory on Health Worker Burnout identifies largely the same drivers across the board: excessive workloads, administrative burden, limited control over scheduling, and inadequate organizational support. None of these causes seem to be unique to any one credential.

Third, workforce shortages appear to redistribute the burden onto everyone else. The Advisory projects that physician demand will outpace supply by 54,100 to 139,000 by 2033, with the most severe gaps expected in primary care and rural areas. When any part of the healthcare workforce is understaffed, it seems the resulting burnout shifts onto everyone else in the system, credentialed or not.

What This Means for You

If you work in healthcare in any capacity, a few honest questions may be worth sitting with.

What has changed about your workload over the past year? Has your patient or task load increased? Has documentation grown rather than shrunk? Has your team become smaller? If the answer is yes to several of these, it is likely that conditions have deteriorated, even if no single change felt especially dramatic at the time.

Are the systemic improvements you hear about actually reaching your role? Coverage of “declining burnout” tends to focus on physicians and, to a somewhat lesser extent, nurses. If you are a pharmacist, a respiratory therapist, or a medical assistant, it is entirely possible that a national headline about improvement simply does not describe your reality.

What is within your control, and what isn’t? Viktor Frankl once wrote that when we cannot change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Pay, staffing ratios, and scheduling are largely systemic and, for the most part, outside of individual control. How one relates to their work, the boundaries they maintain, and where they seek support, however, remain within it.

The Bottom Line

Burnout among any healthcare role appears to carry a real cost, both human and financial. According to the NSI Nursing Solutions 2026 National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, the average cost of a single bedside RN’s turnover is $60,090, with hospitals losing an average of $5.19 million annually to RN turnover alone. When this same dynamic is considered across pharmacy, respiratory therapy, behavioral health, and EMS, it becomes clear that the true cost of healthcare burnout likely extends well beyond what physician- and nurse-focused reporting has captured. Notably, the National Academy of Medicine’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being, launched in 2022 with more than 200 partner organizations, was built explicitly around this broader definition, treating burnout as a whole-workforce crisis rather than a physician-specific one.

If you work in healthcare, in any capacity, and find yourself running on empty, we would welcome the conversation.

Gladstone Wellness was founded by Dr. Surbhi Khanna and Dr. Anthony Massey, two psychiatrists with decades of experience in behavioral health and clinician wellness. Our FLOW program combines individual coaching, evidence-based practices, and peer community for nurses, physicians, and every other healthcare professional navigating burnout.

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