Researchers from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, KLAS and seven other healthcare organizations surveyed more than 25,000 physicians on how their job duties correlate with feeling burned out, in an April 21 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Physician burnout can lead to poor clinical care, an increase in medical mistakes, physician turnover and even suicide. The cost of physician turnover and reduced clinical hours as a result of it is estimated to cost $4.6 billion each year, the study said.
Researchers surveyed 25,000 physicians representing 200 healthcare organizations on burnout, collecting responses from 2018 through June 2020.
Six key findings:
- The specialties with the highest levels of burnout were family medicine (34 percent) and hematology/oncology (33 percent).
- The specialties with the lowest rates of physician burnout were psychiatry (22 percent) and anesthesiology (24 percent).
- Sixty percent of hematologists and oncologists said they spent more than six hours a week in after-hours EHR charting, followed by pulmonologists (56 percent).
- Only 12 percent of radiologists said they spend six or more hours charting in the EHR after hours, followed by anesthesiologists (14 percent).
- Fifty-four percent of hospital medicine physicians reported having organizational EHR support, followed by 50 percent of pediatricians.
- Hematologists/oncologists and radiologists felt the least amount of organizational EHR support, with only 35 percent reporting feeling supported.