Month: January 2019
Physician burnout
Physician burnout has been in the news for the past few years. Defined as a sense of physical and emotional collapse related to work stresses, symptoms include exhaustion, cynicism, feelings of incompetence and poor work performance. In a survey of 6,880 physicians in 2014, 54.4% reported at least 1 symptom of burnout (up from 45.5% in 2011) and the numbers are continuing to rise. A systematic review summarizing articles written about physician burnout suggests that burnout can also lead to an increase in medical errors. Among the suspected causes of burnout are the pressures of seeing more patients in less time, the challenges of documenting clinical visits in an electronic health record, increasing paperwork required by insurance companies, etc. In short, the demands of a fragmented, dysfunctional healthcare system are thought to be an important contributor to the suffering experienced by physicians.