US Doctors Burning Out

Burnout among U.S. doctors is becoming more common and now affects more than half of practicing physicians, according to a new study.

About 54 percent of U.S. doctors experienced at least one symptom of burnout in 2014, compared to about 46 percent of doctors in 2011, researchers report in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Overall, the researchers found that doctors are about twice as likely to experience burnout as the average U.S. worker.

"Things are unfortunately getting worse for physicians," said lead author Dr. Tait Shanafelt, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Through a partnership with the American Medical Association, the researchers invited nearly 36,000 U.S. doctors to take a survey in 2014 and compared the responses to a similar survey from 2011.

Of the 6,880 doctors who responded to the 2014 survey, about 47 percent reported high emotional exhaustion, about 35 percent felt depersonalized or saw less value in their work and about 16 percent felt a low level of personal accomplishment.

Burnout rates varied between specialties, with rates topping 60 percent among doctors in emergency medicine, family medicine, urology, rehabilitation and radiology.

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