Health Care Workforce Safety and Well-Being

"The nation’s health depends on the well-being of our health workforce", said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. The frontline worker is the most important stakeholder in The Joint Commission’s mission to advance patient safety. This section is intended to enable health care leaders, managers and staff to easily find examples of tools, resources and strategies that they may use in their efforts to improve the well-being of staff. As stated by the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety in Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety (2020), “ensuring the safety and resiliency of the organization and the workforce is a necessary precondition to advancing patient safety; we need to work toward a unified, total systems-based perspective and approach to eliminate harm to both patients and the workforce.”

This page provides links to materials developed by The Joint Commission and key health care-related organizations such as the National Academy of Medicine, as well as the federal government, including The Office of the Surgeon General and CDC NIOSH. The content focuses on organization and system-level resources which are organized in the tabs below according to source. We hope you find the information useful and welcome your suggestions for improvement.

In 2017, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) began an action collaborative on clinician well-being and resilience. In Jan 2022, NAM published a resource compendium to improve the well-being of the health care workforce. 

In October of 2022, NAM released the National Plan, a call to action for all involved, which has been endorsed by more than 30 organizations.

Since 2008, The Joint Commission has produced a series of free safety alert newsletters on workplace violence prevention strategies. A workplace violence resources portal was launched in 2016 that provides links to materials from many organizations and examples of programs in the field. In 2022, new accreditation requirements for hospitals became effective. For more information click the button below.

The CDC National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and several other agencies have developed resources focused on health care worker safety and well-being. In May of 2022, the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory highlighted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health workers, who already faced crisis levels of burnout prior to the pandemic.

This website is not intended to serve as an exhaustive or exclusive repository of publicly available resources related to health care workforce safety and well-being. Nor does it offer any endorsement of the source nor of any particular product, health care organization, or service, nor should it be construed as a statement that the source, health care organization, or its products or services, are superior to those of other source or company. Many of these resources were not developed or validated by The Joint Commission. Approaches utilized by organizations spotlighted in this website are not inclusive of all organizational approaches that may be successful in addressing health care workforce safety and well-being, and strategies may need to be tailored by organizations to meet the unique needs of their setting and patient population. By accessing and using website resources, website users agree to make no claim of any kind against The Joint Commission for any and all damages that result from use or implementation of any website content. Some items included on these pages (such as Joint Commission monographs) were developed several years ago. While much of the content remains relevant, users should be aware that the information has not been updated.