Physician Burnout

Melvin Kooner, an anthropologist who entered medical school in his mid-thirties, characterizes physicians as “tough, brilliant, knowledgeable, hardworking, and hard on themselves.” (Kooner, 1998, pg. 374) Many personal conversations with medical students, residents, and attending physicians from a variety of specialties confirm Kooner’s assessment. Doctors work hard, work long hours, deal regularly with life-and-death situations, and make substantial personal sacrifices to practice in their field. These attributes of medical practice can provide a great deal of satisfaction to the aspiring or practicing physician, but can also be a source of professional and personal distress. Burnout or the experience of long-term emotional and physical exhaustion may result from an inability to cope with the demands of work-related responsibilities and personal obligations. If untreated, burnout may lead to more serious consequences such as depression and suicide.

Though in recent years medical institutions, administrators and departments have acknowledged the high incidence of burnout, depression and suicide among physicians, many physicians who need help are not likely to seek treatment due to fear of stigmatization within the medical community (Center and Davis, 2003). This study recognizes that a physician’s fear of stigmatization within the medical community may be augmented by a fear of shame within the physician’s ethnic community. This paper addresses the ethnic and cultural aspects of this stigmatization within physician culture by discussing ethnically-rooted aspects of shame, differences in communication styles based on ethnicity, and perceptions of mental illness. Ultimately, this study encourages the development of an “[ethnic] c...

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...ysician-patient distinguish between verbal expression and exposure. “Expression” is a positive and healthy articulation of feelings and emotional or psychological states. “Exposure” has a connotation of shame and defenselessness that may dissuade physician-patients from genuinely talking about issues.

Approximately 15% of all physicians will be impaired at some time in their careers and will be unable to meet professional responsibilities because of mental illness, alcoholism or drug dependency (Boisaubin and Levine, 2001). Thus, the issue of addressing physician burnout, depression and suicide is even more pressing. Physicians do not need to suffer silently. In fact, physician-patients may be more effective and competent caregivers and healers if they recognize their own vulnerabilities. Only then will they be able to truly emphasize with their patients’ suffering.