Equity as strategy: Addressing burnout and building resilient healthcare organisations
Abstract
This article examines equity as a strategic organisational factor influencing workforce stability, patient safety ,and resilience in healthcare organisations. Drawing on industrial and organisational psychology, organisational behaviour, and healthcare leadership research, the article synthesises evidence on how inequitable workplace conditions, including mistreatment and microaggressions, information asymmetry, biased standards of competence, and tokenising hypervisibility, can contribute to organisational risk. The analysis identifies psychological safety, organisational justice, identity threat, and resource depletion as key mechanisms through which these conditions influence burnout, disengagement, and turnover intention, with downstream implications for staffing stability, operational costs, care quality ,and organisational performance. To integrate these relationships, the article introduces the Equity-Resilience Organisational Framework (EROF), a conceptual model linking systemic inequity exposures to psychological and social mechanisms, workforce instability, and organisational consequences. The analysis indicates that equity is most consequential when embedded within core organisational systems rather than addressed primarily through discrete or symbolic initiatives. Evidencealigned pathways include inclusive leadership development, equitable evaluation and promotion systems, transparent communication and information access, structurally focused workforce well-being policies, and accountability mechanisms linked to governance and executive performance. The article concludes that operationalising, measuring, and governing equity as strategic infrastructure can strengthen workforce stability, support patient safety ,and enhance organisational capacity to adapt under sustained operational strain. The EROF provides healthcare executives and governing bodies with a practical framework for diagnosing organisational risk, prioritising interventions, and evaluating their impact over time. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.
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Author's Biography
Natalie S. DuMont, PhD, MSIOP, MS, LPC, is a behavioural health executive, industrial/organisational psychologist and licensed professional counsellor with 28 years of experience leading complex healthcare systems through transformation, accountability and sustained performance improvement. She currently serves as a Regional Manager with the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, where she oversees state and federal contractual and regulatory compliance, leads cross-system learning collaboratives and serves on state-wide councils addressing behavioural health integration, infectious disease response and system sustainability. As Founder and Principal Consultant of DuMont Behavioral Health and Organizational Consulting, LLC, Dr DuMont leads large-scale, high-impact initiatives focused on organisational effectiveness, quality assurance and improvement, performance management and long-term sustainability. She provides executive consulting to for-profit and non-profit healthcare organisations in organisational change management, strategic leadership, leadership development, employee engagement and quality improvement — supporting leaders navigating complexity and evolving accountability demands. Dr DuMont’s scholarly and applied work centres on strategic leadership, organisational resilience, healthcare workforce stability and patient safety and performance. A peer-reviewed author and national and international presenter, she is recognised for translating research into practical leadership strategies grounded in mentorship, advocacy and the development of leaders capable of sustaining equitable, high-performing and personcentred healthcare systems.
Cheryl Green, PhD, DNP, RN, LCSW, CNL, CNE, ACUE, MAC, FAPA, serves as Off-Shift Nurse Administrative Manager at the Yale-New Haven Health Bridgeport Hospital Milford Campus and as a Nurse Educator, as well as Doctor of Nursing Chair and Committee Member within the Graduate School at Abilene Christian University, TX. Dr Green has been a registered nurse for more than 35 years and a licensed clinical social worker for over 31 years. Her extensive research interests include: Incivility, mental illness, medication error prevention, medical-surgical health issues, incivility and discrimination, succession planning, prayer and spirituality, self-care, distraction, stress and anxiety, nursing education, death and dying, the COVID-19 pandemic and mental health, health disparities, addictions, simulation, and mindfulness.
Citation
Dumont, Natalie S. and Green, Cheryl (2026, September 1). Equity as strategy: Addressing burnout and building resilient healthcare organisations. In the Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 11, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.69554/VWQS8152.
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