Physician Burnout

SAN FRANCISCO — The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges to medical professionals in caring for their own mental health.

Healio celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month with a focus on physician burnout, an emerging public health crisis among orthopedic physicians and providers.

Results published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery found a relationship between career burnout and barriers to gender equity, with 50.5% of Canadian female orthopedic surgeons reporting career burnout.

While numerous individual level interventions have been recommended to address burnout among physicians, research has shown that system-level changes also need to be made to reduce burnout.

Several personal and professional factors, including sex, race and work hours, may contribute to a higher risk of burnout among orthopedic surgeons, according to published results.

After many infectious disease fellowship programs went unfilled on the latest Match Day, physicians in the field shared why they think the area has recently become more undesirable than in previous years.

U.S. physicians experienced more burnout and work-related stress in 2022 than in 2021, according to a recent survey.

Engaging with ICU survivors and seeing treatment successes in post-ICU clinics may reduce health care provider burnout, according to an abstract presented at Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Critical Care Congress.

Characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a low sense of personal accomplishment, the published literature has shown between 40% and 60% of orthopedic surgeons will experience episodes of burnout during their career.

On Sept. 15, the AMA released a statement saying that the burnout rate among United States physicians spiked during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing research published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.