COVID-19 has exposed the grim underbelly of a fragmented, regionalized, costly, and inefficient approach to health service that is an engine for health workforce burnout. A matrix framework that defines the nature of system-level structural determinants of burnout and their relationship to service-level wellness can serve as a useful tool to understand workforce burnout causality, and guide meaningful intervention. This could inform a constructive system-level approach to health workforce burnout through the establishment of harmonized principle-based interventions across health sector jurisdictions and stakeholders.