CBS News (5/28, Ivanova) reports on its website that the World Health Organization “now includes ‘burnout’ in its International Classification of Diseases Handbook, where it is described as an occupational-related condition ‘resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.’” The story explains that “according to the WHO, doctors can issue a diagnosis of burnout if a patient exhibits three symptoms: feeling depleted of energy or exhausted; feeling mentally distanced from or cynical about one’s job; and problems getting one’s job done successfully,” although “burnout is to be used specifically ‘in the occupational context’ and that it ‘should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.’”
NPR (5/28, Wroth) reports that “despite earlier reports to the contrary, WHO does not classify the problem as a medical condition” but instead “calls burnout an ‘occupational phenomenon’ and includes it in a chapter on ‘factors influencing health status or contact with health services.’”
Study Shows Physician Burnout Costs Approximately $4.6 Billion Each Year TIME (5/28, Oaklander) reports that US physicians “experience symptoms of burnout at almost twice the rate of other workers, often citing as contributors the long hours, a fear of being sued, and having to deal with growing bureaucracy, like filling out clunky and time-consuming electronic medical records.” Now, TIME writes, “the economic impacts of burnout are also significant, costing the U.S. some $4.6 billion every year, according to a new study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.”
HealthDay (5/28, Reinberg) reports that for this study, lead researcher Joel Goh from the National University of Singapore “and a team of researchers from Stanford University, the Mayo Clinic, and the American Medical Association created a mathematical model to estimate the cost of doctor turnover and the shorter hours that result from burnout.” Goh said, “We found that at an organizational level, the annual burnout-associated cost was estimated at approximately $7,600 per physician per year. At a national level, the estimated cost ranged from $3 billion to $6 billion a year.”
Related Links:
— “World Health Organization classifies work “burnout” as an occupational phenomenon, “Irina Ivanova, CBS News, May 28, 2019