SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Three years removed from the start of the pandemic, physicians in the United States are reporting feelings of burnout like never before, with most having the feelings as much as once a week.
According to a report from the American Medical Association, 63% of physicians are reporting signs of burnout weekly, with many in the field calling the situation an epidemic of the U.S. healthcare system.
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KCBS Radio’s Alice Wertz spoke with Dr. Jack Resneck, the department chair for dermatology at UCSF and acting president of the American Medical Association, on this week’s episode of “As Prescribed.”
Resneck shared that while the number of doctors reporting struggles rose dramatically during the pandemic, the number has not fallen in the post-pandemic world.
“This is really one of the things that keeps me up at night as AMA president,” Resneck said. “As you said, we’ve seen physicians experiencing symptoms of burnout before the pandemic, about 38%, and now it’s up to 63%.”
What Resneck says is an “even more alarming” statistic is that one in five physicians are planning on leaving the medical field altogether within the next two years.
“At a time like this, where we know patients are experiencing long wait times to get appointments, we just can’t afford to have that happen,” Resneck said.
As for what’s behind the feelings of burnout, Resneck says the pandemic created its own issues, with many going from supporting physicians to pushing “disinformation and anti-science aggression” on social media.
While many physicians found their way into health care for several reasons, Resneck said taking care of patients was the foremost. Now, he says health insurers getting in the way of doctors prescribing medications, government interference, and more have left many wondering why they stay.
“The thing that really drew us all into medicine as physicians is that time that we get to spend with our patients,” he said. “I read a study a few years ago that the average physician was now spending for every one hour face to face with our patients, two additional hours documenting in their electronic health records, sometimes in their pajamas at night, fighting with insurance companies to get things approved.”
Still, Resneck has hope they can address the issues causing burnout, especially since they know what the cause of it is for so many physicians.
“The good news is that because this has been so well-studied and because we actually know the things that drive burnout, we have a great recipe book in terms of things we can do to help solve this problem,” the doctor said.
To listen to the full interview with Dr. Resneck and to hear what he thinks about burnout in physicians, listen to this week’s episode of ‘As Prescribed':
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