How to Overcome Burnout as a Healthcare Assistant: Essential Strategies for Wellbeing

Are you a healthcare assistant who feels like your job is catching up on you? Is it affecting your time outside of work? Healthcare assistants are the backbone of patient care, and burnout as a healthcare assistant is becoming common in this role.

Read below to discover effective ways to avoid burnout through recognition and prevention.

The Landscape of Burnout Healthcare

According to a 2022 survey by the Royal College of Nursing, 57% of nursing staff reported feeling burnout due to their job, raising concerns across the healthcare sector. Healthcare assistants face similar pressure, and statistics suggest that up to 40% report symptoms of burnout.

Understanding Burnout

Burnout is a state of physical and mental tiredness, often caused by exposure to long periods of high-stress levels. However, it’s important to understand that signs of burnout vary between individuals.

Chronic fatigue and lower tolerance levels towards patients are clear signs. Alongside this, emotional detachment from your career and a lack of satisfaction are strong signals of burnout as a healthcare assistant, whereas physical symptoms may include headaches or stomach issues.

Root Causes of Burnout

The role of a healthcare assistant is highly demanding. On top of this, long work hours, stressful workloads, and difficult situations are all burnout catalysts. Sometimes, constant caregiving takes an emotional toll with many healthcare assistants working a chaotic schedule.

Finally, a lack of support or sufficient resources causes higher levels of stress, making it difficult to maintain a work-life balance and high-quality care for patients.

Further Impacts of Burnout

Burnout as a healthcare assistant causes considerable damage to individuals and patient care. Healthcare organisations often see increased absenteeism and staff turnover as a result of burnout, which leads to serious mental health issues for healthcare assistants and inconsistencies in patient care, leading to a decline in healthcare quality.

How to Avoid Burnout as a Healthcare Assistant

To prevent burnout as a healthcare assistant, a careful, strategic approach covering multiple factors is required.

Healthcare assistants must prioritise self-care. By focusing on regular exercise, clean eating, and seven to nine hours of sleep, you will begin to recover. Additionally, learning to say no is essential. Sometimes, extra shifts or overtime is unnecessary, and rejecting these hours is important for work-life balance.

Alternatively, meditation or breathing techniques are highly effective in managing stress levels. And finally, reaching out for external support counters burnout, whether this is support from colleagues, support groups, managers or counselling.

Hobbies and activities outside of work provide distraction and purpose. In turn, these counterbalance and escapism from workplace stress.

Training to Prevent Burnout

Cucumber Recruitment understands the importance of providing healthcare assistance with the resources to recognise the importance of avoiding burnout. Our training regimes develop a core skill set involving stress and time management, alongside organisational skills.

Emotional intelligence is another key factor. It allows for stronger teamwork, which builds an effective communication network. Setting boundaries, as mentioned earlier, is key in our training. We help healthcare assistants recognise the importance of work-life balance.

Cucumber’s Commitment to Well-Being

As one of the UK’s leading providers of healthcare assistants, we are dedicated to the well-being of our professionals. Through regular check-ins, flexible working options, and access to exceptional mental health resources, we continue to shape the path for professional well-being while developing successful healthcare careers.

Organisational Strategies for Preventing Burnout

Prioritising organisation will help you to keep on top of burnout. Healthcare facilities should create a supportive environment for healthcare assistants, so employees can prioritise their well-being. But how should they create a supportive workplace? Open communication, manageable work schedules, sufficient resources, and regular development training all help.

How to Spot Burnout in Your Team

For the well-being of healthcare workers and patients, spotting the early signs of burnout in your colleagues will help considerably. As discussed, burnout leads to a decrease in productivity and healthcare quality, and an increase in errors. In turn, patient healthcare and healthcare assistants’ mental health are at risk.

With the correct strategies and meaningful support, burnout can be avoided. It’s an organisation’s responsibility to create a supportive environment for healthcare workers as it benefits staff and patients.

Are you a healthcare assistant looking for work-life balance? Are you suffering from burnout in your current role? At Cucumber Recruitment, our training programmes for staff help you or your colleagues navigate burnout.

Reach out today to learn how to navigate burnout or help others avoid the physical and mental exhaustion of the healthcare industry.