At the 2016 annual meeting of the American Medical Association, a physician burnout expert from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., examined the factors that contribute to burnout and offered self-assessment strategies to address the issue.
The long hours and challenging professional demands that are intrinsically built into the physician profession often lead to isolation, which can leave a physician feeling emotionally drained. Tait Shanafelt, MD, a hematologist and physician burnout researcher from Mayo Clinic, described burnout as a systemic issue that has yet to be treated as such. "We have not mobilized the way we would to address other factors affecting quality access and patient satisfaction," Dr. Shanafelt said.
Dr. Shanafelt stated that burnout is primarily the product of three contributing factors:
• Depersonalization: A sense of being treated more like an object and less like a person.
• Emotional exhaustion: A loss of vocational enthusiasm.
• Low accomplishment: A sense of feeling ineffectual in the workplace, whether or not the perception is accurate.
Dr. Shanafelt also suggested that burnout is partially fueled by personality traits inherent to physicians. "The characteristics that define many doctors are doubt, guilt and an exaggerated sense of personal responsibility," he said. "But these are the qualities that make you a good physician. They lead you to be thorough, committed, leaving no stone unturned."
Addressing and prioritizing one's personal values regarding work-life balance is essential to addressing burnout. Dr. Shanafelt offered four self-assessing questions that can help a physician prioritize his or her professional and personal goals.
• What do you care about most in your personal life?
• What would living in a way that would reflect those values look like?
• What do you care about most in your professional life?
• What time are you devoting to align yourself with those things?
Dr. Shanafelt said, "If I think that I'm going to be a world expert in my field, but never miss a soccer game to be away at study section, presenting at a meeting, to be writing a grant or manuscript, that's an unrealistic expectation...the question is, how many soccer games is it OK to miss to still have the relationship with my kids that I want and the impact professionally that I aspire to? It's this integration of these two spheres that's really where the rubber meets the road."
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