Frustrated care providers are changing the terminology describing their woes. What is commonly called burnout — exhaustion caused by an excessive workload or mind-numbing tasks — beleaguered doctors and nurses now label “moral injury.” At POLITICO’s Health Care Summit this week in Washington, Amirah Sequeira, national government relations director of National Nurses United, explained that the term better describes what nurses experience in understaffed hospitals. “When a registered nurse knows the level, the quality of care that they are able to provide a patient, but they are unable to provide that level of care because of unsafe staffing levels and working conditions, that causes deep moral injury,” she said. Sequeira said the labor union is pushing for more laws, like California’s, which require hospitals to increase the number of nurses on duty when patient loads increase. A larger movement: Dr. Simon Talbot, a surgeon at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, co-founded a group for care providers called Moral Injury to highlight the risks to patients if those who care for them feel they can't because of their working conditions. That limit differs from person to person, but many doctors and nurses face increasing amounts of documentation and pressures to work toward business ends instead of patient care, he said. “You are bringing them into an unsustainable situation,” Talbot said of the next generation of health care workers. The group contends that government could help by: — Reigning in prior authorization requests from insurers, which ask doctors to prove their care plan is appropriate — Reauthorizing a congressional program aimed at supporting care providers’ mental health — Investigating anti-competitive practices and abuses of power in health systems Why it matters: “It’s far more efficient to have your doctors stay than to have them leave and retrain someone into that job,” Talbot said.
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