Preventing Provider Burnout

Many clinicians experience burnout at some point in their careers. To help you better navigate the issue of burnout, we reached out to three clinicians to get their perspectives and summarize the solutions that worked best for them. Join us as we tell the stories of Antoinette Bryce, Naomi Cohn, and Courtney Wagner - three clinicians who have used Alma to alleviate their feelings of burnout.

Signs of burnout in mental health care providers

Identifying burnout is the first step to addressing it. You may be experiencing burnout and not even realize it. You may be dealing with professional burnout if you’re experiencing any of the following symptoms:

• Feeling like you’ve lost your purpose
• Never feeling like you’re ever fully recharged
• Being in a permanent state of emotional and physical exhaustion • Becoming increasingly cynical about the job at hand
• Constantly feeling overwhelmed with work
• Indulging in self-medication or numbing behaviors like online shopping or heavy social media use
• Having intense difficulty focusing on tasks
• Experiencing a noticeable decline in empathy

For more information on the signs of provider burnout, we recommend reading Therapists: You're Not Ineffective, You're Exhausted.

What causes burnout for clinicians?

There’s been a surge in demand for mental health care that has not only caused clinicians to limit new referrals, but has also contributed to a growing sense of burnout. This increased need for mental health care may be a lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to growing feelings of anxiety and depression among the American public.

Just because the need is great doesn’t mean you must overwork yourself. You want to be present with your clients, and you can lighten stress by addressing familiar sources of burnout.

Therapists need to be their best selves for the clients they work with - and they can lighten their stress by addressing other familiar sources of burnout within their field. This includes:

• A lack of professional boundaries with clients
• Insurance hurdles and administrative hassles
• A lack of caseload specialization
• The impact of secondary traumatic stress

Burnout can feel overwhelming, but the following tips can help you alleviate the symptoms and lessen their impact.

Create (and keep!) professional boundaries with clients

Setting professional boundaries can be one of the most effective methods of protecting yourself from the effects of burnout as a therapist—but it’s often easier said than done. You might feel that it’s your responsibility to always be available to clients, but clinicians also have a duty to be at their best and maintain their capacity to help clients to the best of their ability.

One way you can avoid boundary issues from cropping up is by using contracts and informed consent. Setting clear guidelines with clients at the beginning of the relationship can help prevent any issues later. Documents like a Patient Service Agreement and Consent Form allows providers to set boundaries and other guidelines they’d want their clients to adhere to. For reference, Alma offers various form templates that are easily downloadable for members. You can find them here.

Sometimes out-of-session communications are necessary and outside of your control. When this occurs, it’s best to use your clinical judgment on how to respond. Just don’t set the expectation that you’ll be available 24/7– this may lead to burnout and can ultimately affect the quality of care you provide clients.

Other examples of how clinicians have enforced professional boundaries with clients include being consciously aware of going overtime during sessions and being mindful of your own personal feelings when dealing with clients.

Get support with billing and paperwork

Insurance is great for increasing accessibility to mental health. But the sheer amount of documentation it brings is often the straw that breaks the camel's back for burnt out clinicians. After all, you became a clinician to help people—not to spend hours on administrative paperwork. The added labor of billing and documentation can contribute to existing feelings of exhaustion.

Thankfully, therapists can circumvent this common source of burnout by allowing Alma to handle all of their paperwork, from eligibility checks to claims submissions, with guaranteed payment within two weeks of each appointment. On average, credentialing through Alma is 3x faster than individual applications.