A Different Lens on Avoidance in Care Teams

In healthcare, not every issue gets addressed in the moment.

Sometimes there simply isn’t enough time. A shift is moving fast. Patients need attention. Staffing is tight. Another priority takes over. A difficult conversation gets pushed aside because everyone is trying to get through the day.

What else may be going on?

Over time, what starts as a practical response can become a pattern. Issues fall through the cracks. Tension goes unnamed. Follow-through becomes inconsistent. Conversations that need to happen are delayed again and again.

Avoiding a problem can feel like the safest way out of a tight situation. But in care teams, avoidance often creates downstream operational and relational problems that are much harder to resolve later.

Over 60% of StressPal Frontline participants report that a common stress-triggered behavior they are seeing in coworkers is avoidance.

That matters.

In high-pressure environments, avoidance may be an unhelpful stress response. When the stress response kicks in, people may move into fight, flight, or freeze. Avoidance often fits into that “flight” response. It’s a way to get distance from internal discomfort, conflict, uncertainty, or emotional overload.

Avoidance isn’t always obvious. It may not look like someone refusing to do their job or ignoring a serious problem. More often, it shows up in smaller ways.

A task that triggers uncomfortable memories is put off. And left undone.
A concern is noticed but not raised, lest it stir up more conflict.
A difficult conversation is postponed until “things calm down”, but do they ever calm down enough?
A leader senses something is off but moves on because there are already too many fires to put out, and at the same time is anxious about it causing delays in picking her son up on time. Again.

One problem is that avoiding the uncomfortable internal experience doesn’t usually make the issue disappear.

It can move the cost somewhere else.

A missed conversation may become a patient safety concern. A repeated pattern may become a team norm. A small misunderstanding may become resentment. A lack of follow-through may become distrust. A leader’s silence may be interpreted as approval, indifference, or lack of support.

Over time, avoidance changes the emotional climate of a unit. The same can be said for a slew of other maladaptive stress-triggered behaviors, like sarcasm and defensiveness.

People begin to fill in the blanks. They make assumptions about intent. They stop bringing things forward. They protect themselves by disengaging. The team may still function, but with more friction, less trust, and less psychological safety.

Stress isn’t just something people carry internally. It shows up in body language, micro-expressions, tone of voice. They reflect our inner experience, and influence how leaders and co-workers interact.

The good news is that avoidance isn’t a character flaw. It’s a brain-based response that can be noticed, self-assessed, and changed.

With brief, structured training, teams can learn to pause earlier, recognize stress responses in real time, and choose a different action before unhelpful behaviors become the default. That kind of psychological flexibility can help people stay connected to their values, even when the environment is demanding.

This doesn’t mean every issue needs to be addressed immediately. Timing matters. Capacity matters. But it does mean teams benefit from brief training to proactively acquire cognitive strategies of psychological flexibility and applying them at work, and home.

Avoidance may feel like relief in the moment, but the cost is often paid later by the team, the leader, and sometimes the patient.

Where might avoidance be a factor in what’s hanging up communication and resolution of an issue in your team?

Authored by Pennie Sempell, J.D, Co-founder and co-author of StressPal Frontline: Essential Resilience Self-Care and Burnout Intervention, an innovative professional development intervention specifically developed for healthcare and allied frontline workers.