3 Key Approaches to Addressing Physician Burnout

A HealthLeaders webinar this week on the topic of physician burnout included three approaches to addressing the problem: reducing stigma, measuring burnout, and promoting a culture of well-being.

Physician burnout is a pressing issue at health systems, hospitals, and medical groups across the country. Physician burnout has several negative consequences at healthcare organizations, including deterioration in quality of care, compromised patient safety such as medical errors, and reduced physician retention.

Physician burnout spiked during the coronavirus pandemic. In a 2021 survey of physicians conducted by the American Medical Association, Mayo Clinic, Stanford University School of Medicine, and the University of Colorado School of Medicine, 62.8% of physicians reported experiencing burnout symptoms. Physician burnout has fallen since the pandemic but remains at a concerning level. In 2024, 43.2% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout, according to the AMA.

This week’s webinar, which was part of The Winning Edge series organized by HealthLeaders, featured a four-member panel of experts: Jim Gilligan, vice president of health system and group engagement at the AMA; Nigel Girgrah, MD, PhD, chief wellness officer at Ochsner Health; Christopher Pomrink, DO, MBA, vice president of medical affairs at Virtua Health; and Sapna Singh, MD, CMO and medical director of physician wellness at Texas Children’s Pediatrics.

To promote physician well-being, healthcare organizations should address the stigma associated with physician burnout and mental health challenges because stigma discourages physicians from reaching out for help, the panelists said.

Healthcare leaders should avoid a culture of silence and shame when it comes to physician burnout and mental health, and they should embrace a culture where it is OK for physicians to not be OK. This effort includes encouraging leaders and physicians to share personal stories about their struggles. In addition, healthcare organization leaders should encourage physicians to reach out for help.

Healthcare organizations should remove intrusive and stigmatizing questions from applications for physician credentials.

Leaders at healthcare organizations should normalize discussions about physician burnout and mental health. This effort should include discussing physician burnout and mental health at meetings such as medical executive committee meetings.

Measuring physician burnout

Healthcare organizations should have formal processes and methods for measuring physician burnout, according to the panelists.

It is crucial to use a validated survey for measuring physician burnout. Several validated surveys are available such as self-assessment surveys developed by Stanford Medicine and the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy.

Engagement surveys are not a substitute for surveys that measure physician burnout and well-being because physicians can be engaged and still suffer from symptoms of burnout.

Physician burnout and well-being surveys should include questions that provide insight into the drivers of burnout, which can guide healthcare organizations in adoption of burnout interventions. For example, a survey may identify administrative burden as a primary driver of physician burnout, which can lead to interventions such as enlisting support staff to tackle prior authorization work or adoption of an AI scribe tool to reduce documentation burden for physicians.

Promoting a culture of well-being

To address physician burnout, healthcare organizations should establish a culture that supports well-being, according to the panelists.

Healthcare organizations should not just talk about the importance of physician well-being. They should make meaningful investments in promoting well-being such as having a chief wellness officer who has a budget and staff who are dedicated to promoting well-being.

Well-being should be part of the executive team’s goals, and the executive team should report data on well-being indicators to the organization’s board of directors to ensure accountability.

Well-being should be on the agenda of a healthcare organization’s departments just like other key performance considerations such finance and patient experience.

Ease of practice initiatives are a crucial element of creating a culture that supports physician well-being. These initiatives should include system-level interventions such as optimizing the electronic health record and identifying the “pebbles in the shoe” that irritate individual physicians.

Physicians should be functioning at the top of their license, and efforts should be made to offload work from physicians that can be done by other staff members. Workflow redesign is one strategy to shift low-value work away from physicians.