Burnout Among Physicians

Daniela Hrizo, 6/2/24

Over the past couple of decades, we have seen a national increase in burnout in the medical field. According to the National Library of Medicine, “A nationwide survey study conducted by Shanafelt et al. evaluated the prevalence of stress in physicians and included 6880 US physicians (aged 35–60 years) from different specialties. The results of the survey showed that 54.4% of the US physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout when compared with 45.5% in 2011.” In this article, we will explore burnout, its corresponding factors and impact, its respective variance among physician specialties, and its comparison between countries.

What is Burnout?

As defined by Psychology Today, “Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.” Reasonably, physicians are twice as much at risk for burnout than other comparable professions. This is because of demanding work hours and a burdening level of education. Plus, their daily schedule may consist of making difficult decisions or being involved in other stressful situations. On top of that, burnout decreases work satisfaction.

Factors

As stated in AMA, Researcher Christina Maslach, PhD, has identified 6 factors of burnout.

1. Work overload

2. Lack of control

3. Insufficient rewards

4. Breakdown of community

5. Sense of unfairness

6. Conflicting values

Physicians may feel overwhelmed by their job in more ways than one, including having too much work, feeling that their facility isn’t morally right or fair, and much more. These characteristics can tire physicians mentally, emotionally, and physically, thus being the monumental reasons for burnout, especially during times like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additionally, dissatisfaction is starting to become more prominent in the medical field since physicians are now only spending a third of their time doing meaningful work and helping patients, whereas they spend the rest of their time doing administrative or paperwork.

Impact

With a large part of our medical workforce experiencing burnout, many consequences are coming to light. As also mentioned in the National Library of Medicine, “Physician fatigue has a negative impact not only on one’s well-being but also on patient care and the healthcare system. This may be consistent with low job satisfaction, decreased work productivity, medical errors, poor quality of patient care, low job satisfaction, early retirement, and healthcare system failure [7,8].” Overall, increasing rates of burnout among physicians is not only harming the individuals themselves but also their patients and the medical field as a whole. Since our physicians carry such an important role in society, these high burnout rates are detrimental. Physicians become less productive, make more mistakes (which could be fatal per situation), and overall provide worse care. Therefore, not only is burnout a problem for our physicians, but they also impact the whole nation.

Difference Between Specialties

Typically, the physicians who experience the highest rates of burnout are those who work in the “front lines” of medicine. Because of this, these individuals inherently experience more stress than their other physician counterparts. AMA lists the top 6 physician specialties with the highest percentages of burnout:

1. Emergency medicine: 62%

2. Hospital medicine: 59%

3. Family medicine: 58%

4. Pediatrics: 55%

5. Obstetrics and gynecology: 54%

6. Internal medicine: 52%

In every specialty listed, the majority of the physicians within the field are burned out, which is very concerning. With this in mind, it is evident that stress and burnout are very correlated since emergency medicine (where physicians within the field may witness several fatal wounds, injuries, and even deaths on a day-to-day basis) is listed to have the highest burnout and is known for its extremely stressful work.

Country Rankings

As shown in The Commonwealth Fund, the top 10 countries with the highest percentage of burnout among physicians are shown above. The USA is depicted as the country with the 3rd highest burnout rates. It is also interesting to note that all of the countries in the chart are highly developed. This shows that the countries with the most well-established healthcare systems put the most stress on their physicians, thus resulting in extremely high burnout percentages worldwide. Plus, similar studies show that COVID-19 drastically increased the percentage of burnout in the medical field worldwide, contributing to this growing number.