Identifying and Addressing Burnout in the Orthopaedic Surgeon

Abstract

Throughout the career of a physician, they are subjected to long working hours, high stress, life and death situations, risk of malpractice, significant financial debt, and an increasing bureaucratic load. This, in turn, has led to significant rates of burnout and potential suicidal ideation. Suicide prevalence has increased roughly 30% over the past 2 decades, with surgeon suicide rates reaching as high as 3x that of the general cohort. Orthopedic surgeons are most severely affected, composing 28.2% of physician suicides and seeing one third of their suicides from 2003 to 2017 occurring in the last 2 years alone. We provide the latest data and the current trends in orthopedic burnout and suicide rates, delve into the possible inciting factors driving their increase, and provide recommendations to identify their early signs and mitigate progression.

Resilience in Residency and Beyond

“…Especially as of late, wellness and burnout have become popular topics examined broadly in medical and surgical training and practice [17][18][19][20][21][22] . These 2 concepts can be considered states of being related to one another that exist across a spectrum.…”

“…Not only does patient care suffer but the effects of burnout have deeply burdened our profession of orthopaedic surgery. Surprisingly, up to 52% of orthopaedic surgeons claim to be burned out, and in response, Pearl et al recently published a thorough review with recommendations to identify early signs and slow progression 22 . More alarming, Elkbuli et al recently published an article that highlights orthopaedic surgery as the surgical field with the highest prevalence of suicide based on a review of Centers for Disease Control and Preventions National Violent Death Reporting System from 2003 to 2017 26 .…”