UW Medicine honored for supporting staff’s mental health

UW Medicine has been recognized as a 2025 “Wellbeing First Champion” for removing intrusive and stigmatizing language about mental health care and treatment from its credentialing and professional review applications.

The recognition came from ALL IN: Wellbeing First for Healthcare, a coalition of healthcare organizations working to eliminate barriers that discourage health workers from seeking mental health care. Member organizations include the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association and the American Hospital Association.

Mental health problems are common among healthcare workers. Many report feeling depressed, emotionally exhausted and disillusioned about their work. Suicide rates are high, particularly among female physicians and nurses.

A review by the American Hospital Association suggested that an important driver behind this high suicide rate is clinicians’ fear that seeking mental health care will harm their ability to renew or retain their medical licenses or cause them to lose hospital privileges through the credentialing process.

Questions about mental health on credentialing and professional review forms discourage health workers from seeking treatment and do little to improve the quality of care, said Corey Feist, cofounder of the coalition. 

“By eliminating stigmatizing mental health questions from licensing and credentialing processes, we are taking a crucial step toward ensuring that all health workers can seek the care they may need without fear,” Feist said.

In the past, hospitals and medical licensure bodies routinely required healthcare workers to reveal whether they had a history of a mental-health or substance-use disorder, even if the disorders were not current and did not affect their ability to provide care. 

The goal of such requirements was to protect patients from impaired healthcare providers, but there was little evidence that the requirements were effective, said Dr. Brian Johnston, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He oversees medical credentialing at Harborview Medical Center.

“While questions about physician health on credentialing applications appear to fulfill our responsibility to protect the public, these intrusive questions may defeat this purpose by incentivizing providers to avoid needed care,” Johnston said.

To merit “Wellbeing First Champion” recognition, hospitals and health systems must take three steps to reduce the stigma around seeking mental health care: 

• Audit all credentialing applications and peer review forms.
• Change any invasive or stigmatizing language around mental health.
• Communicate these changes to their healthcare workers to assure them that it is safe for them to seek care. 

UW Medicine began its review  in 2024. The audit prompted the health system’s Office of Medical Staff Affairs to revise the questions on forms used in credentialing and reviews. The language in its credentialing questions, for example, was changed from a focus on past problems to current problems that might affect care.

“The key consideration for credentialing is current impairment: Can this person safely, competently and ethically carry out the expected tasks of their position with or without reasonable accommodation?” Johnston said.

“UW Medicine recognizes that our providers experience health conditions, including those involving mental health and substance use disorders, just as our patients and other healthcare workers do,” Johnston noted. While no longer asking about past conditions, UW Medicine is trying  to help its workforce identify and seek help for current concerns well before they become a problem or interfere with the ability to provide care. 

The ALL IN coalition is led by the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation. Breen was an emergency room physician in New York City who took her life in 2020 after working 12-hour shifts for weeks during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to her friends and family, Breen grew despondent but was concerned that if her mental health problems became known, it might cause her to lose her medical license. Her death prompted her family to form the foundation to combat burnout and prevent suicide among healthcare workers. 

The foundation’s chief medical officer, Dr. Stefanie Simmons, will present the “Wellbeing First Champion” award on June 9 to Anne Browning, UW Medicine’s chief well-being officer.

Written by Michael McCarthy.

For details about UW Medicine, please visit http://uwmedicine.org/about.