UAB sociologist Cindy Cain, Ph.D., holds a copy of her new book, "Called to Care," which shares lessons on what makes work meaningful and how to remove obstacles that get in the way.Can you tell me a story about a time when you felt good about your work?
That question is at the heart of 15 years of research in five different healthcare settings nationwide by Cindy Cain, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Sociology. In June 2026, what Cain calls the “capstone” of that work was published: her book “Called to Care? Health Care, Burnout, and the Search for Meaningful Work,” from Rutgers University Press.
Finding meaning in your work, Cain’s research shows, can be an antidote to burnout. Burnout has plagued healthcare organizations for more than a decade, and it skyrocketed following the COVID pandemic. Today, with tech-fueled uncertainty and disruption reaching into nearly every industry and workplace, burnout is threatening to become a global crisis.
“There are a lot of people who are suffering because they don’t feel like their work has the meaning that it had before,” Cain said. “Finding your work to be meaningful is important to pretty much everyone. And there are things we can do in our workplaces to help people feel like what they are doing is meaningful.”
Connection, progress and what gets in the way
“Called to Care” shares lessons on removing obstacles to meaningful work. It is based on Cain’s deep observation and nearly 100 interviews with doctors, nurses, chaplains, social workers, certified nursing assistants, physical therapists and more working in challenging settings: end-of-life care, dementia care and patients with substance use disorders.
“Finding your work to be meaningful is important to pretty much everyone. And there are things we can do in our workplaces to help people feel like what they are doing is meaningful.”
She did not ask them, “What’s meaningful about your work?” directly. “When you do that, people freeze up and say, ‘I don’t know,’” Cain said. “I approached it by asking them about a time they felt good about their work, and to tell me stories about it.” Then she asked them to talk about the things that got in the way of good work in their jobs.
Her findings aligned with her own experience in the workplace. Before she became a sociologist, Cain’s resume included hotel housekeeping, cellphone sales, childcare, restaurant work and caring for adults with disabilities. “In every job, no matter how underappreciated it is, there are people who love what they do,” Cain said.
These are not just individual superheroes, though. Analyzing her interview transcripts, Cain saw a common pattern emerge. “The two elements that structured all their stories were connection and progress,” Cain said. “Sometimes they talked about connecting with patients, but it could also be to co-workers or the mission statement of the organization — something that is bigger. And then also feeling like the work you are doing is moving something forward.”
“Anytime there is a workaround in the process, that’s a good place to look and ask, ‘What’s getting in the way of people doing good work here?’”
The obstacles were very situation-dependent. Paperwork and documentation came up a lot; but so did things as seemingly small as the placement of supplies, taking time away from patient care by requiring multiple roundtrips across a facility daily.
Cain learned to home in on the workarounds that interviewees shared. “Anytime there is a workaround in the process, that’s a good place to look and ask, ‘What’s getting in the way of people doing good work here?’” Cain said.
Making work meaningful is larger than any individual
“Called to Care” makes the case that meaningful work is not a solo project. “Most of the time when we think about meaning, we think it is something that is in individual people’s heads,” Cain said. “That does happen; but organizations set up the opportunities for that to happen, and the larger culture also provides the cognitive tools we use to create these meaningful experiences. We need to think about meaning as something that is part of the collective experience.”
Many healthcare leaders, including those she worked with in her research, want to make their workers’ experiences better, Cain says. They just do not know how to do it.
But there are common patterns, Cain says, and organizations and individuals alike can adapt these to their own search for meaning in work, no matter what industry they are in.
Where organizations can start:
1. Stop looking for the quick fix.
“The big takeaway is that there is no quick fix to burnout,” Cain said. “It has to be a continual process of searching out ways to do things better and to be more supportive.”
2. Talk to the front lines — and ask the right questions.
Finding ways to do things better starts by “talking to the people on the ground,” Cain said. “You have to engage with them in an open and curious way. You can’t just go in and ask people, ‘What makes you burned out?’ That’s not going to give you useful information. You have to ask, ‘What’s getting in the way of your doing what’s best?’ according to whatever that looks like in your setting.” Other good questions include “What annoys you?” and “What leaves you feeling depleted?”
3. Find common themes and remove obstacles.
Although workers’ pain points will vary, common themes should emerge from these discussions. “Then you need to engage authentically and sincerely to try to remove those obstacles,” Cain said.
Do not leave workers out of these discussions, she adds. Convene small groups and ask them to identify a few structural changes that would help address their concerns.
Where individuals can start:
1. Take time to reflect.
“Think about when you feel like you have done really good work,” Cain said. “Are connection and progress part of that? Maybe there is something else that is part of it for you as well. Then ask yourself, ‘What gets in the way of my doing good work?’ One way to enhance your thinking could be to keep a log of activities that energize you, and deplete you, at work.”
2. Begin with what you control.
“Ask yourself what you have control over, which obviously is not everything,” Cain said. “But what little piece do you have control over where you can start to enhance your job?”
3. Look for help with what is beyond your control.
“Then, think about how you can engage with people who have more power than you, a supervisor or someone like that, to help change the workplace in a way that will make more opportunities for meaningful work,” Cain said. “It’s not just about the individual but thinking about how you can work with other people to build a different kind of workplace.”
4. Be willing to collaborate.
“It can feel like people above you are mindlessly making decisions or not really considering the things that matter,” Cain said. “But I try to remind myself that they are also trying to fix a problem. They may define the problem differently than I do, and they may support solutions in place that I don’t think will work; but that’s my opportunity to share my knowledge and try to have that be an iterative process instead of just saying, ‘That will never work. I just won’t participate at all.’”
Finding the common patterns in unique situations
Cain’s own biggest takeaway from writing “Called to Care” was that “the solutions really are context-dependent,” she said. “It’s really about what is happening in the specific setting.”
But just as with her work on meaning, Cain believes that helpful patterns will emerge from interviews and deep observation. “I would like to find a few case studies where people are trying to improve the quality of work and the quality of care that they’re providing and see how they do that,” Cain said. “What kinds of things are they trying to do? What kind of resistance are they getting? What kinds of processes are they putting in place?”
From those case studies, “I think we can extract some principles in terms of where to start,” Cain said. “Not prepackaged solutions, but the kinds of questions to ask and structures to build to act on what you figure out about your own setting.”
Cain encourages readers who want to discuss how their workplaces are working toward changes to contact her at
Related story: Hear more from Cain about meaningful work in healthcare in this interview from Take 5 Tuesday, a weekly email from the UAB Medicine Office of Wellness.