Beyond Burnout: Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic Challenges to Self-care

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This paper is a review of the self-care challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic on the physical and emotional health and well-being of healthcare providers. New self-care practices are presented. RECENT FINDINGS: Globally, thousands of health care practitioners and staff have been infected; many have died. Research studies reveal that this pandemic has threatened the health of healthcare staff, their families, and communities in many unique ways, such as fear of infecting family (lack of safety at home), moral injury, witnessing the suffering of the “innocent,” coping with a problem too big to solve (the enormity problem), and racial trauma. SUMMARY: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global population in ways not seen in a century. The unique self-care challenges of COVID-19 while enhancing the symptoms of burnout, i.e., physical, and mental exhaustion, despair, helplessness, and suicidal thinking, need to be addressed directly. This paper offers a new COVID-19 self-care model and approach.