Prevalence and predictors of staff burnout and shortages among syringe services programs in the United States, 2023

High levels of burnout have been a persistent experience of healthcare workers, which can have cascading impacts of staff turnover and shortages. We estimate the prevalence and predictors with staff burnout and staff shortages among syringe services programs throughout the United States. For this cross-sectional study, we utilized data from National Survey of Syringe Services Programs (NSSSP). Study outcomes included staff burnout and staff shortages, and predictors included organizational type, number of participant visits, full-time staff, annual budget, urbanicity, lagged drug overdose mortality rates, law enforcement harassment, and community harassment. Our analysis included negative binomial generalized estimating equations for continuous outcomes and logit generalized estimating equations for binary outcomes. In 2022, the prevalence of SSPs reporting staff burnout and shortages as an internal challenge was 58 % and 43 %, respectively. We found that SSPs experiencing law enforcement harassment and urban SSPs reported significantly higher risk of reporting staff burnout, while SSPs operated by a Department of Public Health DPHs reported significantly lower risk of staff burnout. We also found that SSPs experiencing law enforcement harassment and community harassment reported significantly higher risk of staff shortages; while SSPs operated by a Department of Public Health DPHs and SSPs with budgets ≥ $500,000 had significantly lower risk of staff shortages. In conclusion, levels of staff burnout and shortages are alarmingly high among SSPs in the United States. Further understanding approaches that use a systems level approach to address staff burnout and shortages are urgently needed.