Page 9 - Delaware Medical Journal - July 2016

PRESIDENT’S PAGE
DOROTHY M. MOORE, MD
MSD President Dorothy M. Moore, MD is an Ophthalmologist who practices at Delaware Eye MD Associates in Wilmington.
Physician Burnout
Stress in our society is rampant. We hear about it from our patients on a daily basis. We experience it
ourselves and it only seems to be getting worse. You all know the frustration of too much to do and not enough time
to accomplish it all or being pulled in two different directions at once. We
are in a profession with a high level of inherent stress — we have a high level
of responsibility but little control of the outcomes. We work long hours taking
care of sick patients, with ever expanding demands for documentation, meaningful use (or “meaningless” use), quality metrics that seem endless, coding, reimbursement hassles, preauthorization hassles, what I like to call the government intrusion in the practice of Medicine, etc. You get what I more examples.
Generally, we can recover from the day to day stressors but not always. Unfortunately, when you cannot recover in your time away from medicine, this can lead to burnout. The three main symptoms of burnout include:
1) physical and emotional exhaustion; 2) depersonalization — cynicism, sarcasm, and feeling put upon; and 3) a reduced sense of personal accomplishment — seeing your work as without value.1
Physician burnout has become a topic of both discussion and concern over the last few years. A Google search pulls up references
in our medical literature, as well as articles in the popular press. Time2 and US News and World Report3 have published articles on this subject in the last two years. The American Medical Association,4 American Academy of
Orthopaedic Surgeons,5 American Academy of Family Physicians,6 and many others
have printed numerous articles on the rising prevalence of physician burnout. It is a topic covered at some of our national meetings and for good reason. It is getting worse.
In a December 2015 Mayo Clinic Proceedings article by Shanafelt, et al,7 the authors compared the results of a survey
of US physicians with a sample of the US population from August 2014 to October 2014. These results were also compared with a similar survey in 2011. Utilizing
the Maslach Burnout Inventory, they
found 54.4 percent of physicians reported symptoms of burnout vs. 45.4 percent in the 2011 survey. The sample of the population showing 70 percent of emergency medicine physicians reporting burnout to under
40 percent for occupational medicine. However, all subspecialties without exception saw an increase in burnout rates from 2011 to 2014 with many seeing an increase of over 10 percent.7,8 That’s a lot
of distressed physicians. Those with the highest rates of burnout include many of the primary care specialties with rates highest in midcareer. Physicians reported lower rates of satisfaction with work-life balance. Forty-eight and a half percent of balance in 2011 vs. 40.9 percent in 2014. In this study, a higher satisfaction rate was perceived by the general population with 61.3 percent feeling their work schedule allowed enough time for personal and family life compared to 36 percent of physicians.7 What a sad statistic.
Del Med J | July 2016 | Vol. 88 | No. 7
201