‘We’re not surprised’: Physician burnout continues into third year of pandemic

On Sept. 15, the AMA released a statement saying that the burnout rate among United States physicians spiked during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing research published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The Stanford WellMD Center in California's Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, director of the study, revealed that 62.8% of doctors reported having at least one sign of burnout in 2021, compared to 38.2% in 2020 and 43.9% in 2017. The report claims that one in five doctors and two in five nurses want to leave their existing practises within the next two years as a result of the stress brought on by the pandemic. AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., MD, said to Healio, "This is at a time when we're already confronting a workforce shortage and lengthening wait times for patients [and] having] problems getting into see physicians. "So, after viewing all that data, we're pretty concerned. But in some ways, considering the challenging last three years that physicians have experienced, we are not shocked.