ABSTRACT

Burnout among healthcare workers is a serious and under-recognised threat to India’s health system. Indian studies report burnout in a substantial proportion of resident doctors, alongside high rates of depression and suicidal ideation among medical professionals, while the nursing workforce operates well below World Health Organization (WHO) staffing norms. Institutional responses have largely gone the other way, favouring individual-level interventions such as mindfulness applications and resilience workshops. We argue that these measures, whatever their merits, cannot succeed in a system where burnout is produced by structural conditions: chronic understaffing, excessive working hours, and workforce migration. We set out a framework for reform resting on three pillars workforce restructuring, institutional accountability, and policy-level action and argue that in the Indian context, tackling burnout at its roots is as much a patient-safety question as an ethical one.