PLX Academy · Personal Experiences · 14 October 2022
According to The Guardian, doctors suffering from burnout are twice as likely to be involved in patient safety incidents, show low levels of professionalism and have been rated poorly by patients for the quality of the care they have provided.
A joint team of British and Greek researchers analysed 170 previous observational studies of the links between burnout among doctors, their career engagement and quality of patient care. Those papers were based on the views and experience of 239,246 doctors in countries including the US, UK and others in Africa, Asia and elsewhere globally.
They found that doctors aged 20 to 30 and those working in A&E or intensive care were most likely to have burnout. It was defined as comprising emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation – a “negative and callous” detachment from their job – and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment.
The study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that the prevalence of burnout among U.S. physicians was 62.8% in 2021, compared with 38.2% in 2020, 43.9% in 2017, 54.4% in 2014 and 45.5% in 2011.
“While the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic are hopefully behind us, there is an urgent need to attend to physicians who put everything into our nation’s response to COVID-19, too often at the expense of their own well-being,” Dr. Jack Resneck Jr, AMA president, said in a prepared statement.
How can job burnout hurt physicians’ health and what to do about it?
Too many times, the realization comes too late – American Heart Association News writes.
“When people have a major medical event like a heart attack or stroke, they retrospectively go back and say, ‘Oh, I was really stressed, maybe that’s why this happened to me,’” said Dr. Ian Kronish, Associate Director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. “But they don’t think beforehand that they’d better take care of that stress for their health.”
There are many causes of stress, but experts say one leading factor has increased significantly in recent years: work-related burnout.
“Burnout is real, and we’re seeing a lot of it these days,” said Dr. Tené Lewis, Associate Professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta. “People are overwhelmed on all fronts. And we know it’s bad for your heart, your blood pressure and your brain.”
Many media reports cite burnout as a prime contributor to what is being called the “great resignation” as large numbers of people leave their jobs. In May, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned in an advisory that healthworker burnout was leading to staffing shortages that threaten the entire public healthcare system.
“If we fail to act, we will place our nation’s health at risk,” he said in a statement.
A study in PLOS ONE reviewing decades of research linked job burnout to many health problems, including coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, insomnia and depressive symptoms.
Besides the direct effects, burnout can result in unhealthy behaviors that add to the danger. It can lead to smoking, drinking more alcohol, not getting enough sleep.
The first step to deal with burnout is to prevent it, said Kimberly Beckwith McGuire, a clinical health psychologist in West Orange, New Jersey. “Do all the things we know are already good for us: getting good sleep and a reasonable amount of exercise, eating healthy, drinking water and having some interests outside of work.”
But if you cannot prevent it, she said, learn to recognize it. “Are you feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated? If you’re somebody who doesn’t normally get headaches, are you getting headaches? If you’re normally pretty even-keeled, are you now feeling irritable? Are you making more mistakes in your work than normal? These are all signs of burnout.”
If those signs are there, the worst thing to do is to “try to tough it out,” McGuire said. “A lot of folks think they just have to push, push, push, because we’re invincible.”
Instead, she said, do not shy away from seeking help from professional therapists. Look for positive coping strategies – delegate tasks at work, take short walks during the day, do periodic breathing exercises.
“The first thing you have to do is stop and really pull back and find ways to self-care,” she said. “Ensure that you have positive things in your life every single day.”