American College of Physicians: Internal Medicine — Doctors for Adults ®

MKSAP ® 15
Assess your knowledge, prep for the boards, and earn CME credits and MOC points with the best self-assessment program.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Nearly 9 in 10 doctors stressed on any given day

The vast majority of U.S. physicians are moderately to severely stressed or burned out on an average day, with moderate to dramatic increases in the past three years, according to a survey.

Almost 87% of all respondents reported being moderately to severely stressed and/or burned out on an average day using a 10-point Likert scale, and 37.7% specifying severe stress and/or burnout.

Almost 63% of respondents said they were more stressed and/or burned out than three years ago, using a 5-point Likert scale, compared with just 37.1% who reported feeling the same level of stress. The largest number of respondents (34.3%) identified themselves as "much more stressed" than they were three years ago.

The survey of physicians conducted by Physician Wellness Services, a company specializing in employee assistance and intervention services, and Cejka Search, a recruitment firm, was conducted across the U.S., and across all specialties, in September 2011. Respondents mirrored the AMA 2009 Physician Masterfile, with 2,069 completed surveys representing a 99% confidence level with a +/- 3% margin of error compared to about 750,000 physicians. The survey respondent sample skewed more toward non-primary care practices by 11.1 percentage points, possibly reflecting a younger survey sample and fewer primary care medical school graduates.

The top four external stress factors are the economy (51.6%), health care reform (46.4%), Medicare and Medicaid policies (41.2%), and unemployed and uninsured patients (29.7%). Only 8.6% of respondents reported no external stressors.

The top four work-related stress factors are administrative demands (39.8%), long work hours (33.3%), on-call schedules (26.2%), followed by medical malpractice lawsuits, insurance company interference, conflict or disagreements with administrators, increased complexity of care and electronic health/medical records. Only 1.1% reported no stress from work.

The top three personal life-related factors were not enough leisure time (52.6%), not enough time for exercise or wellness (50.6%), concerns about work/life balance, in general (45.0%), followed by concern about finances or sleep. Only 8.4% of respondents indicated that there was nothing stressing about their personal lives.

The result of the stress is declining job satisfaction (51.2%), a desire to reduce hours (41.2%) and a desire to retire early (29.9%), nearly tied with a desire to leave the practice of medicine entirely for another career (27.6%). The next two were also related to changes in their work situation: desire to switch jobs (21.8%) and desire to switch to a new practice (15.9%). Only 6.9% of survey respondents reported no work-related stress.

Fourteen percent of respondents indicated they had left their practice as a result of stress, among whom 56.7% continued practicing, but in a different setting, 33.3% continued working in medicine, but in a different job or role, and 10 left medicine entirely. Most noted some improvement, with 42.6% each saying leaving improved their stress and burnout.

Not surprisingly, all the stress triggered tiredness (41.4%), sleep problems (36.7%) and general grouchiness (33.9%), personal health problems (24.7%) and conflicts with a spouse or partner (22.6%). But 9.1% of respondents reported no impact on their personal lives due to stress and/or burnout.

Most doctors handle the stress through exercise (62.8%) or time with family and friends (56.9%). The next cluster involved vacation (47.8%), movies or music (44.3%), reading (38%) and getting more sleep (35.8%). Mentoring, yoga, meditation or peer support were not as prevalent, and doctors commented that finding the time and, in some cases, money to do something was, well, stressful.

Nearly one-third of respondents indicated that better work hours/less on-call time and better work/life balance would help to reduce their stress. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said ancillary support would help. This feedback and the growing trend of part-time work schedules for physicians indicate a need for advanced providers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants who can provide accessible and effective care as physicians scale back their hours in order to pursue better work/life balance, the companies said in a press release.

Labels: , , , , ,

posted by Ryan DuBosar at 7:00 AM  

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home

Share

 

Contact ACP Hospitalist

Send comments to ACP Hospitalist staff at acphospitalist@acponline.org.

Previous Posts

Blog log

Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:

Albert Fuchs, MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.

Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.

CasesBlog
Ves Dimov, MD, ACP Member, is an allergist/immunologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, where he evaluates and treats both pediatric and adult patients.

David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in integrative medicine and patient-centered care.

db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating medicine and the health care system.

DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about health topics for patients and health professionals.

Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for patients.

Everything Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.

FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship & Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.

Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care, illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital sanctums and the people who inhabit them.

Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD, heartburn, and chest pain.

I'm dok
ACP Member Mike Aref, MD, PhD, ACP Member, is an academic hospitalist with an interest in basic and clinical science and education, with interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code management, palliative care, patient-physician communication, quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.

Informatics Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to biomedical and health informatics.

Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication with Gregg Masters, MPH.

KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites for influential health commentary.

MD Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.

Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, ACP Member, shares her ideas on education, ethics in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast cancer.

More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a Distractible Kind).

Musing of an Internist
Justin Penn, MD, ACP Associate Member, attended medical school at the University of Washington School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine at the University of Rochester, where he is serving as Chief Resident.

Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and medical ethics, in no particular order.

Reflections of a Grady Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.

Technology in (Medical) Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in education, social media and networking, practice management and evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge management.

White Coat Underground
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the intersection of science, medicine, and culture.

Other blogs of note:

American Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.

Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP Member, associate program director at New York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news, commentary and more.

Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.

PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.

White Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency room physician.

Powered by Blogger

RSS feed