A Dual Focus for Mental Health in Healthcare: Building Cultures of Care

a road separates into two through a yellow-treed forest | Tempo Therapy and Consulting | dual focus for mental health in healthcare work

15 Oct 2025

The statistics around mental ill-health in the healthcare workforce are sobering, yet the solutions aren’t only found in systems, policies, or programs. They also live in people: the individuals and teams who show up, care deeply, and carry the weight of that care. To create truly sustainable change, we need a dual focus that addresses both systemic culture and individual wellbeing practices. It’s about learning how to be well, do well, and stay well - together.

Categorised in:

We know that there are significant workforce shortages in the helping professions. This applies to the care and support workforce, and in healthcare, across Australia nationally, and within individual states.

On an international scale, the World Health Organization has predicted a shortfall of 11 million healthcare workers by 2030.

Whilst these figures, and the escalating rates of mental ill-health amongst health professionals are alarming, there are many hopeful initiatives and an increasing evidence-base from which to draw inspiration, and to encourage practical steps forward.

This growing wave of hopeful momentum offers increased awareness, new frameworks for compassionate leadership, and models for collective care.

Culture Makes or Breaks Care

When it comes to mental health in healthcare, team culture is everything.

A compassionate healthcare culture is one where clinicians and staff feel valued, understood, and supported, both professionally and personally.

Compassionate team cultures nurture:

  • 'brave', rather than 'safe' conversations to facilitate authenticity, accountability and meaningful conversations
  • support for self-care and self-leadership
  • a deep sense of community and commitment to collective care practices

'Leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin'.

Edgar Schein

Creating these cultures begins with simple but powerful shifts:

  • Clear boundaries for roles and responsibilities
  • Space for meaningful, and at times uncomfortable conversations
  • Leadership that models vulnerability and follow-through
  • Systems that support recovery, reflection, and growth
  • Learn how to have challenging conversations in a productive way
  • Walking the talk - do what you say you'll do

When the work feels wrong...

A brown-skinned female clinician sits at a desk in a white coat with the sun shining through | Tempo Therapy and Consulting | dual focus in healthcare work

Earlier this year, I joined Jo Muirhead* on The Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast to talk about something long recognised in our professions, but now increasingly named for what it is: moral distress.

Moral distress occurs when our values are betrayed. It’s that deep unease that arises when you know what’s right or clinically appropriate, but the system, policies, or culture around you prevent you from acting on it.

When this happens repeatedly, it can create internal conflict, eroding our sense of integrity, meaning and purpose.

In our conversation, Jo and I explored how moral distress is often mistaken for burnout and how this distinction matters. Both require space for recovery. However, with moral distress, repairing an alignment between values and practice is particularly important.

The key takeaway?

Healing requires a dual focus:

  • Systemic change - brave, compassionate cultures where leaders model authenticity, clear boundaries, and accountability.
  • Individual practices - reflective spaces, creative and somatic tools, and supportive supervision that help us process and integrate what we experience.

As discussed in the episode, part of this healing is addressing the systemic flaws, and learning to discover what’s possible in conversations, in peer connection, or simple acts of kindness, that slowly rehumanise our workplaces, within us, between us, and around us.

We are human beings, not human doings

Whether physical, emotional, or social, working with suffering inevitably affects us. It requires deep compassion, but also deep care of self and colleagues.

Investing in skills like non-violent communication, emotional literacy, and courageous conversation supports the development of more humane workplaces. These skills don’t remove discomfort - they help us to sit within it, with presence so that we can respond rather than react.

'Dig where the ground is soft.'

At times, change can feel too complex to tackle. As Françoise Mathieu of the TEND Academy puts it: “Dig where the ground is soft.”

  • Begin where energy, alignment, possibilities and ease, already exist.
  • Seek out colleagues, networks and workplaces who share your values.
  • Support the initiatives that move the needle, however slowly.

Small actions accumulate: a moment of kindness, a conversation that restores hope, a new way of working that values presence as much as productivity.

Signs of Change: Collective Care in Action

There’s real movement toward a kinder, more sustainable healthcare culture.

A few examples include:

Together, these initiatives remind us that while the work is hard, hope is active, possible, and contagious.

The way forward

If you’re leading a team, shaping culture, or simply trying to sustain yourself in healthcare work, remember that transformation begins in relationship.

We can’t separate personal wellbeing from collective wellbeing - they rise together.

At Tempo, this principle sits at the heart of our supervision and reflective practice programs: supporting those who care for others to reconnect with meaning, creativity, and community: the real foundations of sustainable care.

*You can listen to the full episode of Beyond Burnout: Healing Moral Distress in Healthcare – The Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast here.

Accessing support

If this conversation resonates with you, you might like to explore our therapeutic supervision and professional-development offerings designed to sustain those who support others.

Related Resources

Header image: Damian Siodlak