Physician Burnout Impacts Patient Safety, Study Finds

A new study suggests that patients treated by burned-out doctors may face additional risks in their care.

A new review published in The BMJ found that physicians experiencing burnout are twice as likely to be involved in patient safety incidents including medication errors.

Younger doctors and emergency medicine doctors saw the strongest link between burnout and patient safety incidents, according to the study by academics at the University of Manchester in England.

Patients were less likely to be satisfied with the treatment provided by burned-out doctors.

The study comes as health leaders in the United Kingdom are raising concerns over burnout among doctors working in the NHS.

The authors define burnout as a syndrome related to emotional exhaustion, a sense of cynicism and “detachment” from work, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment.

The study reviewed all available research on doctor burnout to look at the effects on a global scale. They analyzed statistics from 170 studies involving more than 239,000 doctors.

Among the key findings:

• Burnout was linked to an almost four-fold decrease in job satisfaction, and medics were more likely to regret their career choice.
• Physicians were more than three times as likely to have thoughts or intentions to leave their job.
• Overall, physician burnout doubled patient safety incidents.
• The association between burnout and patient safety incidents was most significant in physicians aged 20-30 and people working in emergency medicine.
• As burnout increased, low professionalism was twice as likely, as was patient dissatisfaction.

The authors concluded: “Burnout is a strong predictor for career disengagement in physicians as well as for patient care. Moving forward, investment strategies to monitor and improve physician burnout are needed as a means of retaining the healthcare workforce and improving the quality of patient care.”

Read more at bloomberg.com.