I spent 7 years in veterans healthcare facilities, 4 of those as a scheduler. I watched incredible colleagues run themselves into the ground. I experienced plenty of burnout myself. Not because we weren’t skilled. The systems around us kept failing.
Here are three warning signs that went unaddressed.
The Lunch That Never Happens
I refused to skip lunch. But I watched colleagues do it constantly. Especially when we were understaffed.
They’d eat cold sandwiches at their desks while handling calls. Or skip meals entirely because there was never a good time to step away.
The ones skipping meals made more errors at the end of their shifts. Not because they weren’t good at their jobs. Human brains don’t work well when running on fumes.
What I learned: When your schedulers can’t take lunch breaks, that’s not a problem you can fix with motivation. It’s a system design problem. You need better communication systems. You need proper coverage. You need protected time that’s actually protected. Without those things, you’re asking people to choose between eating and doing their job well.
Apologizing to Families (Again)
I spent so much time apologizing. The appointment got moved. The clinic was running behind. A provider called out and we had to reschedule.
I was taking the blame for system failures and trying to make it right with personal attention.
Looking back, a big chunk of my week was spent managing disappointment I didn’t cause. That wasn’t customer service. That was using my own energy to cover up broken processes.
The people who cared most deeply burned out fastest. We felt personally responsible for every gap. Every disappointed patient. Every scheduling scramble that wasn’t our fault.
What I learned: When your schedulers spend a lot of time apologizing, they’re telling you the upstream systems don’t work. The real fix isn’t teaching better apology skills. It’s making the scheduling and staffing systems reliable. Apologies should be rare, not daily routine.
Sunday Night Dread
I’d check my phone Sunday evening even though there was no reason to. My stomach would tighten thinking about Monday morning.
I’d have work dreams that messed up my sleep. I’d wake up thinking I’d missed covering a shift or forgotten to reschedule someone. That kind of exhaustion where rest doesn’t actually help.
Bodies don’t lie. When work becomes something to survive instead of something to do well, the physical symptoms show up.
I saw this pattern across colleagues too. The departments running in constant chaos had schedulers showing these stress symptoms. The rare departments with more stable operations had fewer people dealing with Sunday night dread.
What I learned: Sunday night dread is your body’s warning system. It’s telling you that the chaos has become too much. You can’t push through it with willpower. The only real fix is making the systems stable. People need to stop walking into guaranteed crisis every Monday morning.
These three signs never got fixed in my time there. People adapted. They compensated. Eventually they burned out or left.
I watched talented schedulers lose their passion for work that should have been fulfilling.
That’s why I care so much about operational systems now. I know exactly what it costs when they fail. I paid that cost myself for seven years.
If you’re seeing these signs in your coordinators, you’re not seeing personal weakness. You’re seeing system failure. It will keep burning through good people until the foundation gets fixed.
The job doesn’t have to be like this. There is a better way.
I help home care agencies eliminate scheduling chaos in 30 days.
Luke