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Mental Health

Future physicians may be burning out before entering the workforce, survey found

Medical students and residents also said seeking mental health care carries a stigma.
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3 min read

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Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.

Medical students and residents may be just as burnt out as their senior colleagues, and the perceived stigma around healthcare professionals seeking mental health care may prevent some from getting the help they need, a new survey suggests.

A survey from the nonprofit Physicians Foundation of more than 2,100 US medical students, residents, and physicians conducted in June found that medical students and residents reported lower overall well-being than physicians. “Three-quarters of medical students have felt inappropriate feelings of anger, tearfulness, or anxiety” compared to 68% of residents and 53% of physicians.

And about seven in 10 medical students and six in 10 doctors and residents who responded to the survey said they “often have feelings of burnout.”

“Not only must we do better for today’s physicians, but we must also help create a better reality for the physicians of tomorrow,” the report’s authors concluded.

Nearly half of medical students surveyed reported that they knew a peer who had considered suicide, and a quarter reported that a peer had considered suicide in the past 12 months—this is “significantly higher” than among residents and physicians, according to the survey.

“Like with physicians in practice, the drivers of burnout in medical students and residents really come from the system. So it relates to their workload, their work intensity, or work compression, in many cases, because of duty hours that the residents are under,” Lotte Dyrbye, codirector of the Mayo Clinic’s program on physician well-being and chief well-being officer at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told the American Medical Association (AMA) in August.

That workload is compounded by social isolation that is unique to medical students and residents who may have to travel away from support systems for clinical training, Dyrbye said.

Medical students and residents surveyed pointed to a perceived stigma surrounding those who seek mental health care. Almost half of medical students and residents reported that either they or a colleague they knew were afraid of accessing mental health care “given questions asked in medical licensure/credentialing/insurance applications,” according to the survey.

That stigma may still persist when they enter the workforce. About four in 10 physicians surveyed also said they or a colleague had been fearful of seeking mental health care due to credential applications.

The Physicians Foundation survey results come amid calls from professional organizations such as the AMA and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to destigmatize healthcare workers seeking mental health help and revise questions on credential applications that ask about a physician’s history of mental illness.

Some health systems are already working to improve future physicians’ well-being. AdventHealth in Orlando, Florida, provides residents with licensed counselors and access to time off, Healthcare Brew previously reported. Others are turning to artificial intelligence to automate charting and other administrative tasks that physicians, residents, and medical students in the survey said contributed to burnout.

Navigate the healthcare industry

Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.