How health-care leaders can foster psychologically safer workplaces

Building safer workplaces requires leaders who understand how years of resource constraints, unhealthy work environments, abuse from patients and a pandemic have contributed to overwhelming burnout and job dissatisfaction among workers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Every day it seems the Canadian health-care staffing crisis worsens, with emergency room closures, not enough family doctors and long wait times to get into long-term care.

At the core are health-care workers who are physically and mentally burnt out from the unsafe work environments they’ve been asked to work in for years, which were made remarkably worse during COVID-19.