Burnout among U.S. doctors is becoming more common and now affects more than half of practicing physicians.
About 54% of U.S. doctors experienced at least one symptom of burnout in 2014, compared to about 46% of doctors in 2011, researchers report in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Overall, the researchers found that doctors are about twice as likely to experience burnout as the average U.S. worker.
Burnout rates varied between specialties, with rates topping 60% among doctors in emergency medicine, family medicine, urology, rehabilitation and radiology.
Doctors working in urology, rehabilitation, family medicine, radiology, orthopedic surgery, dermatology, internal medicine, general surgery, pathology, psychiatry and general pediatrics all saw significant increases in burnout rates between 2011 and 2014.
Despite no increase in the number of hours worked, only 41% of all doctors said they were satisfied with the balance between their work and personal lives, down from 49% in 2011.
In an editorial, Dan Ariely and Dr. William Lanier of Duke University, pointed to three main psychological issues in the workplace that likely undermine doctors’ wellbeing: loss of autonomy, mental exhaustion and “asymmetrical rewards” – meaning that success is barely acknowledged while mistakes come with heavy punishments.
The study team notes that 75% of doctors now work for large healthcare organizations, and meaningful progress toward turning around burnout rates will require work by doctors and their organizations.
Dr. Mark Linzer, of Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis told Reuters Health that patients can help address doctor burnout by encouraging healthcare systems to assess their work environments. This can include measuring time pressures, chaos, lack of control and alignment of values between doctors and leaders.
“If providers, patients and health systems can all come into agreement to address this, acknowledge it, measure it and care about it, I think we can pretty quickly turn things around,” said Linzer, who was not involved in the study.
December 2, 2015