When mission statements and reality misalign: WHY PLACATING NO LONGER HITS THE MARK
Healthcare loooooooves a mission statement. Compassion. Wellness. Integrity. Whole-person care. It looks great on a website. It sounds powerful in a board meeting. A lot of razzle and dazzle. I mean - thats show biz right??
But if you’ve worked inside the system - as a nurse, a wellness practitioner, or anyone actually doing the work - you learn quickly: the values on the wall rarely match the values in practice. And the wild (but no longer surprising) part? In today’s economy, healthcare gets away with it.
Healthcare Keeps Choosing the Cheapest Path and It Shows.
We’re living in a world where costs keep rising, organizations feel strapped, and staffing budgets are the easiest place to squeeze. Administrators know people need stable jobs. They know nurses carry student loans, families, and chronic financial pressure. They know walking away is hard. So when leadership has to choose between the truly values-aligned option or the traditional, economical, “safe” option, they almost always choose what feels financially conservative. Even when the values-based option would save them money long-term. Even when it’s the right thing to do. Even when staff are screaming for it. Even when leaders are well-intentioned. This misalignment continues as a cycle and quickly becomes the culture. And boy, does it feel tacky and cheap to us as providers and to patients.
Nurses Stay Even When the System Fails Them
Another uncomfortable truth: healthcare relies on the emotional conditioning of nurses. From day one, since the creation of the nursing discipline, we’re taught:
Don’t abandon your patients.
If you leave, you’re failing your team or you just weren’t built for this.
Good nurses sacrifice.
“Tough shifts” are just part of the job.
Burnout is a personal problem, not a structural one.
This guilt and shame-based identity runs deep. So even when systems mistreat us, under-resource us, ignore our needs, punish us, or fail to align with their own mission, we stay. Not because we’re weak, but because we were trained to believe leaving is a moral failure. Healthcare knows this and it quietly depends on it while masking with shallow self-care initiatives. Further perpetuating the narrative that it is, once again, a nurse’s burden to solve a problem. Feels gaslighty, no?Change Is Happening, However.
The reason mental health is finally taken seriously today isn’t that organizations just woke up one morning and got enlightened. It’s because people - nurses, clinicians, patients, advocates all started telling the truth publicly. We became “essential,” and it was all televised thanks to COVID-19. We are where we are because people made noise, and people increasingly recognize the importance of mentally sound healthcare providers. Nurses burned out…but for a moment, we had our community’s support. Nurses were proud to go to work because if there was stress, it was from a shared situation mostly out of our control, versus accepting stress induced by greedy healthcare execs who refused to compromise salary despite its crumbling systems. While some got paid the reality was many weren’t given extra money or pizza, they showed up cause it was the right thing to do and because they knew they were appreciated. It’s a perfect example of how recognition can be so simple but so impactful. It is also an example of the same techniques execs utilize to take us for granted, and we see it now more than ever.
Increasingly, nurses become harder to persuade with the classic request to pick up when short-staffed or take an extra patient. And while it doesn’t feel good, we have to advocate for ourselves. We can no longer sacrifice ourselves in the name of “resiliency” rhetoric, gold stars, or pats on the back.
And because of this shift, we’re seeing:
more hospitals talk about emotional well-being
increasing acceptance of integrative health
more awareness of moral injury
more leaders acknowledging the need for cultural change
less pizza parties
But talking isn’t enough. We have to continue to face the uncomfortable to push further; we have to advocate for organizations to do deep and meaningful work. For reasons other than it’s the right thing to do. Patients are losing faith and trust in our healthcare systems. Younger professionals are changing the workforce and choosing different careers. Patients are choosing to not seek care, forfeit insurance, or attempt unsafe treatment methods. Younger people are prioritizing psychologically safe workplaces, balanced schedules, autonomy, values alignment, meaningful time off, mentorship and development, and healthy culture over salary and shiny titles. It’s become evolution and self-preservation. Healthcare can’t attract or retain not only young clinicians, but experienced ones too, if it keeps prioritizing economics over humans. And we are already saying this affects patients and consumer behaviors.
Integrative Health: The First Thing Cut, The Last Thing Valued
Here’s the irony, though: Integrative health can be one of the easiest and cheapest things to implement. Breath work, meditation, acupressure, nutrition, physical activity, trauma-informed communication, mindfulness, sensory regulation - all basically free- yet it’s treated like some luxury employee benefit that is just out an organization’s means or reach. It instead becomes a marketing tool, something to outsource, a ticked off box on a leader’s checklist, a committee-created project that never arrives, a wellness week event with processed granola bars and a “gratitude email.”
Instead of being a daily operational reality. Instead of being part of clinical culture.
It’s wild how much difference a respite room, a five-minute reset protocol, covered lunches, or leadership trained in emotional presence can make, but it is meaningless if the rest of the culture sucks. These initiatives have to be sustainable and address each organization’s specific goals. Instead of assuming what is right for all employees or piggybacking what works for other healthcare operations, engage with staff and ask what they want to see.
As an integrative health nurse who has done consulting, I know there are organizations that want to make improvements and leaders who truly care. I see it when leaders light up when talking with me. It’s because integrative health and employee wellness IS exciting. But unfortunately, it is more than just a “fun” discussion to break up your day. It is serious and frankly, employee lives and the life of your organization depend on it. As organizations continue to catch on and make changes, we must push for meaningful work and give leaders who are interested the supportive frameworks to navigate within. These short-lived, quick and not completely thought-out initiatives will fail, erode trust, and perpetuate the notion that work is not actually essential but extra.
Organizations Are Hiring “Well-Being Officers” (Yay!) But Is It Enough?
Believe it or not, some hospitals are hiring Chief Wellness Officers, Chief Experience Officers, or Well-Being Directors. Unfortunately, this is still not enough. Its not the title thats the problem necessarily but the authority is. If you hire a well-being leader but give them no budget, no influence, or place them five layers below real decision-makers while expecting them to fix systemic burnout with pizza and yoga…then you haven’t hired a leader. You’ve hired optics. You’ve chosen again to placate your employees. To do the role justice, well-being officers need decision-making power, respect, control over operational culture, integration with HR, nursing, and executive leadership, the ability to redesign workflows, and actual resources such as departments or teams of experienced integrative providers.
And for organizations who this feels out of reach for, alternatives exsit. Simple, impactful, and feasible alternatives. In fact, this field has numerous tool kits and resources that exist created by those who understand healthcare systems. Such as but not limited to: the American Medical Association, the National Taskforce for Wellbeing, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Joint Commission, and the U.S. Surgeon General. Even magnet-level recognition exists in organizations that meet criteria for embodiment of Workforce Wellbeing Organizations deemed worthy by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
My point being - the resources exist, are easily accessible, evidence-based, and there are no longer excuses.
In the AI Slop Area - Deep Commitment to Mission Matters.
As we continue to exist in the age of AI-driven workflows, placating leadership and generic interactions no longer work. Healthcare systems need to recognize that as we move into more and more algorithmic decision-making, rapid automation, “efficiency,” and corporate restructuring, employees feel the blandness and robotic moments in their day-to-day workflow. It’s becoming easier and easier for organizations to slip into metrics over meaning. In a system that already emboldens treating employees like cogs in the machine, this will be felt tenfold with the abuse of AI. Disingenuous work will mean less engaged employees leading to less productivity, decreased patient satisfaction, and ultimately self-sabotaged system failures.
If we do not prioritize alignment between a true mission statement and reality, AI and its benefits will essentially devolve into meaningless slop. Dehumanized and disconnected moments in a field that has been the most trusted and heart-centric profession in history. And guess what? Patients and consumers - NOTICE.
That’s why organizations must double down on authenticity, values-based decision-making, employee support, human-centered leadership, long-term thinking, integrative practices, and ethical use of technology. Humans crave connection, and the organizations clever enough to instill this as priority will be ahead of the game.
“I don’t want to be treated as a number.”
“This provider took the time to listen to me.”
“My manager met with me for an hour to foster my career.”
These moments separate healthcare legends and generational institutions from new age tech start-ups, corporations, or outsourced compassion and integrity. These are the moments that influence a patient’s decision in where they seek care.
Have you ever sat on hold? Begging a robot for “customer service"? My point exactly. We are all just human beings screaming at a phone, begging for human connection.
