Burnout Matters

Physician burnout is a tragedy.

It's not just a problem for well-off doctors; it's a problem for patients. It is not just symptomatic of a failed system, it's emblematic of the reason it's failing.




Mark Linzer is a physician leader who has been studying burnout for 20 years and details some impressive facts about burnout in primary care:

- stressful workplaces, not burned out doctors themselves, produce worse care
- 50% of doctors are emotionally exhausted and feel detached from patients (burning/burned out)
- 30% of doctors are likely to leave their job in 2 years
- drivers of burnout have been identified and respond to interventions
- it costs roughly $250,000 to replace a doctor

This is a big deal. Doctors have allowed ourselves to become trapped in workplaces that basically render us helpless in the face of increasing demands. Paradoxically, we want to care for patients, and patients want attention from their doctors, but barriers exist that are harmful for all (except perhaps the bean counters and profit seekers).

How do we take it back? How do we create work environments that can sustain us as people, as healers, as parents, as givers? We can't wait for department leaders. We can't wait for professional organizations. We can't wait for provider organization CEO's.

I think we need a professional organization that is truly going to represent the interests of primary care doctors. We need a forum to speak about what is wrong, and we need a way to make firm requests about how to make things better. It's emblematic of a profession that has ceded it's authority and autonomy to unknown forces

Surgeons wouldn't allow their operating rooms to be understaffed and underequipped. We wouldn't tolerate a work environment that didn't allow us to treat blood pressure or diabetes.  Why do we allow ourselves to be overburdened and under-resourced to provide care and attention to patients? Why do we allow managers to reference financial constraints and throw up their hands? I ride my bike to work every day amid the modern colossus of gleaming medical buildings, a colossus that the orders issuing forth from my fingertips help to build, and I can't get a social worker to help my depressed patients because the medical center doesn't have enough money?

I don't buy it.

Am I part of the problem?

Courtesy Scott Burgan Flickr

What is scarier than finding out that your hard work might be part of the problem?


Healthcare is a $2 trillion dollar problem that's getting worse- funding for education, infrastructure, public safety, and even public health is flat. At the same time we have headlines about race riots, train derailments, and even oils spills. It's hard to believe it's 2015 and our police are still brutalizing minorities, our trains are falling off their tracks (presumably because someone hit it with a rock), and we can't seem to keep toxic sludge inside of its pipes.