Burnout Among Health Care Professionals: A Call to Explore and Address This Underrecognized Threat to Safe, High-Quality Care

Abstract

The US health care system is rapidly changing in an effort to deliver better care, improve health, and lower costs while providing care for an aging population with high rates of chronic disease and co-morbidities. Among the changes affecting clinical practice are new payment and delivery approaches, electronic health records, patient portals, and publicly reported quality metrics-all of which change the landscape of how care is provided, documented, and reimbursed. Navigating these changes are health care professionals (HCPs), whose daily work is critical to the success of health care improvement. Unfortunately, as a result of these changes and resulting added pressures, many HCPs are burned out, a syndrome characterized by a high degree of emotional exhaustion and high depersonalization (i.e., cynicism), and a low sense of personal accomplishment from work [1,2].

Registered Nurse Burnout, Job Dissatisfaction, and Missed Care in Nursing Homes

“…Burnout and occupational stress among healthcare workers are increasingly being recognized as significant threats to patient safety and care quality . The National Academy of Medicine is particularly focused on this issue and, in 2017, launched the Action Collaborative on Clinician Well‐Being and Resilience to address it .…”

Gender‐responsive education and training approaches to improving physician well‐being

“…Medical schools and health care organisations are not exempt from the responsibility to pursue and ensure gender equality . There is evvidence of gender‐related disparities in physician well‐being outcomes; female physicians have been found to have a 30–60% greater risk of burnout than male physicians . Women physicians die by suicide at greater rates than women in the general population, in comparison with men physicians and their peers in the general population .…”

“…There is evvidence of gender‐related disparities in physician well‐being outcomes; female physicians have been found to have a 30–60% greater risk of burnout than male physicians . Women physicians die by suicide at greater rates than women in the general population, in comparison with men physicians and their peers in the general population . Female surgeons demonstrate nearly two‐fold greater rates of alcohol abuse than male surgeons .…”

Quality & safety in the literature: May 2019

“…As Dyrbye and colleagues stated, ‘…burnout represents real suffering among people dedicated to preventing and relieving the suffering of others’ 26. For too long, healthcare has rewarded long hours of challenging, emotional labour at the expense of the self.…”