Over the last decade, surveys of American physicians have shown an alarming decrease in professional satisfaction and well-being accompanied by an increase in the symptoms of burnout.1 Physician burnout is a dysfunctional syndrome comprising emotional exhaustion, cynicism, depersonalization, and loss of empathy, accompanied by career dissatisfaction, from a feeling of meaninglessness of work and a sense of low personal esteem and accomplishment.2 Burnout represents a growing problem because it leads to serious harm to both physicians and patients. It produces physician impairment with poor judgment, treating patients as objects, medical errors, and poorer patient outcomes. Burned-out physicians exhibit work–life imbalance and conflicts, abandon the profession, elect premature retirement, and experience higher rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide.3
Footnotes
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See page 797
- © 2017 American Academy of Neurology
Letters: Rapid online correspondence
- Patient satisfaction surveys and burnout
- Editorialist response to Czempisz et al.
- Mindfulness: A possible addition to avoid neurologists burnout?
- Response to Dr. Goldenberg's letter
- Burnout mitigation strategy
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