#475 - 🟠 [CHNC 2026] - Why burnout is a Systems Problem and not a personal failure.

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Why does one difficult case sometimes feel heavier than it should? Recording at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. Jennifer Kett, division head for bioethics and palliative care at Seattle Children’s, ahead of her keynote on secondary trauma in the NICU. Dr. Kett unpacks the overlapping concepts of primary and secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, moral distress, the moral residue crescendo, and institutional betrayal, using the metaphor of a pitcher of water. She shares the personal warning signs she watches for, why clinicians try to go it alone, and how teams can shift difficult cases among themselves. Above all, she argues that burnout is a systems problem that requires system-level resources, not more yoga at work.

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