Q4 2025 Insights

Across the Healthcare sector, the prevailing sentiment among workers, particularly nurses and other bedside staff on social media, is one of widespread burnout and moral injury, rather than just stress. A core grievance is the pervasive issue of short staffing and unfavorable patient-to-staff ratios, which forces workers to handle unmanageable workloads, often leading to cut corners, skipped breaks, and compromised patient care. This is exacerbated by a perceived lack of support from management and administration, who are often viewed as prioritizing corporate profits and metrics over the well-being and resources of the "boots on the ground" staff. Workers report feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, with many experiencing severe anxiety, memory issues, and a sense that the job is "ruining their life" due to the constant pressure, fear of mistakes, and the reality of insufficient time to provide adequate care . The trend in survival is a strong push toward leaving the bedside or the entire profession; an alarming number of nurses have quit clinical care or plan to do so in the near future, seeking out less stressful, non-patient-facing roles like case management, outpatient infusion, or even entirely new industries to reclaim their work-life balance and mental health. The core sentiment is that the system is broken, and personal resilience training is not the solution, it is organizational change, better wages, mandatory staffing ratios, and protection from workplace violence and management blame that are desperately needed.

As mentioned in the previous quarter, academic physicians, from residents, to fellows, and even attendings at the professor level but not in director roles, are feeling massive burnout and are overencumbered with patients during clinic days, which can often reach 5 or even 6 days a week. Academic hospital administrators often prioritize RVUs and overall EBITDA goals and thus exhaust their teams. Many physicians in academic hospitals in urban areas that service patients at the poverty line or lower income brackets even report that administrators have been forcing them to take on patients outside of their board certification areas of focus. Administrators have even neglected complaints of patient assaults on medical staff, including incidents of allowing patients to open-carry weapons during examinations with physicians, nurses, and technicians.

As a result, many medical professionals in these settings have taken to remote case reviews, chart reviews, remote second-opinion provision, and even legal expertise for medical-based lawsuits and court cases. Physicians who have made this transition have reported yearly incomes at least 25% greater than working in academic hospitals, with about 30% less hours per week. Administrators of academic hospitals are experiencing the real “quiet quitting” from their medical staff, with real consequences for patients and remaining staff because of the prioritization of RVUs and EBITDA. However, there seems to be no realization of this by administrators.

In the Pharmaceutical/Biotech industry, the sentiment is more varied but highlights growing pains and strategic career movement, particularly with respect to work-life balance and compensation. Professionals, especially those in roles like Medical Science Liaisons (MSLs), often report a better work-life balance compared to clinical roles, appreciating the control over their remote or independent schedules and generally higher job satisfaction that allows them to enjoy time outside of work. However, there are significant pockets of discontent, particularly within Big Pharma and large Contract Research Organizations (CROs), where reports of high workload, the expectation to do the job of multiple people, and cyclical low morale due to frequent layoffs, restructuring, and cost-cutting measures are common. A key coping and advancement trend in this industry is "job hopping," where employees, especially in their early career, switch companies every two to three years to secure significant pay increases and title promotions, which they believe are less readily available through internal progression. While some find great satisfaction in the science, innovation, and good compensation, others express weariness with the bureaucracy, politics, and the relentless pressure of a profit-driven environment, leading a notable subset of pharmacists and clinical research professionals to explore pivoting to entirely new fields, such as data analytics, finance, real estate, or software engineering, leveraging their highly technical and transferable skills to find a less volatile career path.

August 2025

Employee sentiment in healthcare is marked by a deep-seated battle against burnout and a sense of being undervalued. On social media, many professionals, from nurses to doctors, argue that "burnout" is a misnomer and that the real issue is "exploitation" by hospital systems focused on profits. They cite under-staffing, long shifts, and a lack of support from management as primary causes. Nurses frequently describe working with patient ratios that they feel are unsafe, leading to emotional and physical exhaustion. The sentiment is that they are being forced to do more with less, with ancillary staff cuts requiring them to perform additional tasks like cleaning rooms. While they are driven by a desire to help people, the systemic issues are leading to a high rate of turnover.

Academic medicine, especially in densely-populated urban areas, has shown a nepotistic hierarchy whereby medical directors and department heads with full-fledged professor status often defer clinic patients to fellows and assistant professors (early attending physicians) with already-filled clinic schedules. Safety and security is also a problem, with many administrators focusing on RVUs and not about disgruntled patients being angry with wait times and under-staffing. In cases where patients bring weapons, many administrators have dismissed staff complaints of feeling unsafe in order to preserver RVU flow and avoid bad press.

Residents and fellows who work in academic medicine who are looking to specialize often find that they are never permitted to focus on their specializations in academic hospitals due to administrators’ obsession with RVUs as opposed to proper patient care and staff and patient satisfaction. This leads to burnout and either delays in completing their professional programs due to transfers to different institutions, or changing specialty focus, altogether.

The healthcare sector continues to be a dominant force in the U.S. labor market. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the industry added 55,400 jobs in July, accounting for more than 75% of all job growth in the country for the month. This strong performance is being driven by the ongoing demand for services, particularly in ambulatory healthcare (outpatient services), hospitals, and home health care. The pharmaceutical and life sciences sub-sector also showed steady growth, with more than 3,000 new jobs added, indicating continued investment in research and development.