Almost half of U.S. doctors burned out by workload: Survey

Additionally, more than 37 percent of respondents out of 7,000 doctors queried said they work more than 60 hours per week.

Bloomberg: About Half Of Doctors Say They're Burned Out By Workload
About 1 in 2 doctors are burned out, showing signs of emotional exhaustion and little interest in work as patient loads increase, U.S. researchers found. Doctors working in emergency, family and internal medicine were the most likely to feel drained, according to the study released today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers said burnout also was tied to long hours, with 37 percent of physicians working more than 60 hours a week (Pettypiece, 8/20).

Reuters: Nearly Half of US Doctors Struggle Burnout: Study
Job burnout strikes doctors more often than it does other employed people in the United States, according to a national survey that included more than 7,000 doctors. More than four in 10 U.S. physicians said they were emotionally exhausted or felt a high degree of cynicism, or "depersonalization," toward their patients, said researchers whose findings appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Joelving, 8/21).

Medpage Today: Burnout A Bigger Problem For Docs Than For Others
Burnout is significantly more common in physicians -- particularly for those on the front line of care -- than it is among the general U.S. work force, researchers found. Some 37.9 percent of physicians said they experienced burnout symptoms and 40.2 percent said they were dissatisfied with their work-life balance, versus 27.8 percent of those in the general U.S. work force experiencing burnout symptoms and 23.2 percent who said they felt overworked, a significant difference, according to Tait Shanafelt, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, and colleagues (Petrochko, 8/20).

In related news --

Modern Healthcare: Patients Still Turning To Specialists For Primary-Care Servuces: study
More than 40 percent of patient visits for primary-care services took place at a specialist physician's office, suggesting "current and continued inefficiency in the delivery of primary-care services," according to a research letter published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and Yale University, New Haven, Conn., compared National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey records from 1999 with records from 2007 and saw virtually no change in the percentage of primary-care service visits conducted at specialists' offices: 41 percent in 1999 and 41.2 percent in 2007 (Robeznieks, 8/20).