According to a recent study conducted by the American Medical Association, 63% of physicians reported symptoms of burnout such as emotional exhaustion and depersonalization at least once per week.

Burnout is not a new term to physicians nor any other profession, but it is gaining more awareness due to the acceleration of stress in our society since the pandemic. It is always important as physicians to make an effort to identify the signs and symptoms to see if it is affecting you, your relationships, or your ability to care for patients. Burnout is often overused and may mean different things to different physicians. Just like that extra dessert everyday can cause your waistline to increase, apathy and mental exhaustion caused by burnout can creep into your life without realizing it happened. It may creep into your practice and slowly erode your good habits and your self-discipline. Then before you realize it, your personal relationships and even your ethical standards may be damaged because you were quick-tempered or made a poor judgement.

Overcoming burnout has been addressed by increasing programs for physician wellness by organized medicine at the AMA level as well as at MSMA. As part of the AMA Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians, one core element of the plan is addressing physician well-being. Working a required module on burnout only increases burnout, but the AMA does offer resources and strategies to help physicians if you can spare the few minutes to review. Some of those resources are available at https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/what-physician-burnout.

First, you have to inventory your practice and career as well as your personal life. Do you feel emotionally empty at the end of a long day? Do you feel a lack of empathy or negative attitudes toward your patients? Do you feel like your personal achievements really do not matter? Are relationships with your spouse or your children suffering?

John Cross, MD

We can all answer “yes” to those questions at certain times of the day or during busy times in our clinical practice. Are those times we answer “yes” more frequent than the times when we answer “no”? Have we learned how to recharge and refresh ourselves to answer those questions honestly as “no”? How can we develop steps in our daily routine to keep those answers at “no”? What is it that allows us to reset? How do we answer the question of why we chose a career in medicine?

According to the research by the AMA, here are five ideas to consider if you begin to feel the symptoms in your clinical practice.

  1. Adjust your expectations by giving yourself more flexibility and autonomy.

  2. Get rid of stupid stuff by improving processes.

  3. Invest in better staffing models to offer support.

  4. Designate a well-being executive like a chief wellness officer for your practice group.

  5. Establish peer support programs to help one another and network with other physicians.

There is no simple solution, but a large portion of the solution does require a close investigation into ourselves. It requires us to take a step back to identify the outside influences and external factors that break down our psyche and hamper our ability to care for our patients. What do we individually need to maintain a positive career and personal life balance based on our own personality and family dynamics?

We need to be aware that other physicians have these same issues, and we are not isolated or alone. Take the time and use the tools and resources from the AMA, MSMA, or our own Mississippi Physician Health Program. Feel free to reach out to an MSMA representative to learn more about resources available if you find yourself struggling with burnout or isolation.

“While burnout manifests in individuals, it originates in systems. Burnout is not the result in a deficiency in resiliency among physicians, rather it is due to the systems in which we work.” -Christine Sinsky, MD AMA vice president of professional satisfaction.