Feeling burnout is common in many professions, but it’s a huge issue in healthcare—according to a recent Medscape report, 47% of physicians experience burnout. That’s up from 44% in 2019.
From working long hours to handling regular bureaucratic duties to dealing with the everyday stressors of working in healthcare, it’s no wonder physicians are feeling more burnt out than ever.
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We’ll discuss the causes and symptoms of physician burnout and explore some strategies to help combat it.
Main Causes of Physician Burnout
First, let’s discuss five of the most significant causes of physician burnout:
- Work/Life Balance
Ideally, your personal life is what helps you recharge from having your energy drained at work. However, two factors often prevent this for physicians:
- Work/life balance skills aren’t taught during medical education. Many residency programs teach the opposite—physicians learn how to ignore their own needs while caring for patients, working until they can’t go any longer and going some more.
- You have sources of stress outside of work. From simple conflicts in your relationships to financial pressures, having additional stress outside of your practice means you don’t have anywhere to recharge, which can cause burnout symptoms to appear even faster.
- Traits From Medical School and Residency
Most physicians inherit several traits during medical school and residency that follow them into their day-to-day processes as healthcare providers. And often, the same traits that set you up for success contribute to burnout down the road.
For example:
- Many physicians are “workaholics” who respond to challenges by working longer and harder.
- Physicians often feel like every challenge is their responsibility to solve, and they must have every answer.
- The thought of making a single mistake is something physicians can’t stand, and they tend to hold everyone to that standard.
- Job Duties
In addition to generic stresses, every physician also has unique stresses at their specific job. From local politics and leadership clashes to your personal work team and call rotation, stressors are all too common.
And yes, you could change jobs to try to escape this stress matrix, but you’d likely find the same stressors no matter where you go. It’s tempting to think that different practice models would come with less stress; however, in most cases, it simply leads to trading one stressor for another.
- The Stress of Being in Clinical Medicine
Being a physician is stressful—it always has been and always will be; it’s a fundamental feature of the profession for one reason: physicians constantly work with hurt, scared, and sick people and their families.
It’s a job that involves stress and takes a great deal of energy, even on the best days. Having great responsibility with little control is a huge contributor to physician burnout and stress. And it’s inescapable as long as you have patients, regardless of your specialty.
- Supervisor’s Leadership Skills
Finally, it’s no secret that stress levels and work satisfaction are directly tied to the leadership skills of your supervisor. People quit their bosses, not their jobs—this is true for physicians, too.
A recent study shows this direct relationship. Having an unskilled or absent boss is one of the most significant sources of physician burnout, especially during a time when physician groups form quicker than they can find the right people to fill leadership positions.
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Symptoms of Physician Burnout
While physician burnout can manifest itself in many ways, let’s explore the three cardinal symptoms that many healthcare professionals experience:
Lack of Efficacy
Having a lack of efficacy means doubting the quality or meaning of your work. Many physicians suffering from burnout start questioning their work, wondering if they’re really making a difference or genuinely helping anyone. (Note: Of course you are—it’s the burnout talking!).
Exhaustion
One of the most common symptoms, exhaustion, is something that almost every physician will deal with at one point. It happens when your emotional and physical energy levels drop extremely low and continue in a downward spiral. Exhausted physicians likely have thoughts about not being able to keep going on like this any longer.
Compassion Fatigue
Depersonalization or compassion fatigue is when you feel the constant need to vent about your job or patients—usually accompanied by sarcasm and cynicism. This burnout symptom happens when your emotional energy is completely drained, leaving you emotionally unavailable to your patients and anyone else.
Ways to Combat Physician Burnout
Avoiding physician burnout relies on lowering your stress levels and improving your ability to recharge outside of work.
Some tips to help combat physician burnout include:
Balance Your Work/Home Life
Balancing your work/home life is difficult for physicians of all specialties. One thing we often recommend to help combat burnout is creating a “life calendar.”
If you look at your calendar right now, it’s probably full of work commitments—where’s the scheduled time for yourself and your family?
Anything that’s not on your calendar is not likely to happen, so fill it out! Pencil in your commitments outside of work. For example, you could include your workout schedule, next vacation, some blocked-off free time (even if it’s only a few minutes), etc.
Implement Flexible Schedules
Long work hours are a significant contributing factor to physician burnout. Some organizations try to combat this by assigning them fewer shifts, but that practice can have the opposite effect, making physicians feel they have less time to complete their regular workload.
Instead, offering flexible scheduling policies can help. For example, some organizations use a time-banking system, giving physicians credits when they work hours beyond their regular shifts. Then, they can exchange those credits for rewards to help restore their work-life balance.
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Hold Regular Staff Meetings
Setting up a team huddle each day can help combat burnout and reduce stress by improving your team’s efficiency throughout the day while reducing the feeling of chaos.
It’s as simple as meeting for a few minutes throughout the day. You should include every member of the patient flow team (receptionist, float nurse, the person who rooms your patients, etc.).
During the huddle, review the schedule, troubleshoot any patients who will need special attention, go over any open appointment slots, and discuss any issues that your team might face during the day.
Career Alignment = Health Alignment
Having a clear sense of “Purpose” aligned with your career is one of the eight key factors of optimum health. Reach out to MindBody Talent for a complimentary, 1-hour “Career Consultation Session”. We work with individuals to help elevate their careers, as well as with practices as a whole to optimize the performance and satisfaction of practice teams.
Reach out to schedule your Career Consultation session.
