Author Archive for Tami Swartz
Tami Swartz is an Associate Editor at HCPro, Inc. where she writes for the monthly publication Briefings on Patient Safety.
About one-third of surgeons suffer from burnout, study suggests
A new study in the Archives of Surgery has found that 30 – 38% of surgeons across the country suffer from burnouts, according to a piece in Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog.
The study suggests that younger surgeons and female surgeons are at especially high risk for stress and burnout, and found that a number of factors lead to its cause, including:
- Length of training
- Long hours and large workloads
- Imbalance between career and family
- Feeling of isolation
- Grief or guilt over patient death
- Insufficient research time and funding
- High self-imposed expectations
- An inefficient and/or hostile work environment
The study describes an attitude among surgeons that long hours and heavy workloads are expected and emotional responses are not, which researches say feeds stress and burnouts. The study concludes that being overworked is counterproductive and leads to self-destructive behavior that may affect quality of care.