Drivers of Occupational Distress

Abstract Future physicians complete their undergraduate studies with excellent mental and emotional health. Once these students enter medical school, their enthusiasm, vitality, idealism, and engagement are systematically eroded by the training process. Similarly, more nurses also experience burnout during their early working years. We believe a helpful way to look at professional distress is to think about six characteristics of a health care system that, when working optimally, create engaged professionals and meaning and purpose in work. These characteristics are workload and job demands, efficiency and resources control and flexibility, organizational culture and values, social support and community at work, and work–life integration. When these six workplace dimensions do not function optimally, they become drivers of burnout.