It is estimated that medical resident burnout affects up to 30% of medical residents. What is medical resident burnout? It is a state of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of accomplishment among physicians in training. This article will explore the causes and effects of Medical resident burnout as well as how you can protect yourself from this condition.
Long Hours
Medical residents often work long hours with little time for rest or relaxation due to competing demands on their time, such as continuing education requirements, research obligations, and patient care responsibilities. This combination makes it difficult to maintain personal boundaries and can cause Medical resident burnout.
Decreased Emotional Well Being
It has been found that Medical residents are at an increased risk for depression, anxiety, panic attacks, marital problems, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, or other addictions. Due to Medical resident work environment stressors such as lack of sleep or social support, this often leads to decreased emotional well-being.
Patient Complaints
Residents may feel like they cannot provide patients with the same level of care their fully trained colleagues have due to inexperience resulting in patient complaints towards medical residents, which can lead to feeling unappreciated by staff members. This contributes further severity on matters regarding medical resident burnout among physicians in training.
Resident Medical Errors
Medical residents are more likely to make medical errors on new patients due to inexperience. Medical resident burnout can be related to causing these mistakes, which often lead to an increase of lawsuits against hospitals and other clinical facilities where physicians in training provide service.
Lack Of Control
Medical residents may experience a lack of control when it comes to personal life decisions. This can lead medical residents to feel more stressed out and result in burnout among physicians in training.
Decreased Job Satisfaction
Medical residents are less satisfied with their jobs due to the long hours, lack of sleep, and lack of social support. They feel unappreciated by staff members, resulting in feelings regarding increased stress levels among pre-residents.
Overworked
Life Balance Medical residents may experience a lack of work-life balance. Medical residents have been found to have higher chances of experiencing physician burnout resulting from being overworked, underappreciated, increased demands on personal life decisions while working at hospitals or other clinical facilities where physicians in training provide service. In fact, these factors combined can greatly influence doctors who are still learning how to practice medicine, making them more susceptible to feeling overwhelmed by what they see at work, potentially leading up to experiences with stress and even potential psychiatric illnesses like depression.
To summarize, medical resident burnout can be a result of several factors. Medical residents might experience physician burnout by being overworked, underappreciated, and having an increase in demands on personal life decisions while working at hospitals or other clinical facilities where physicians in training provide service.
