Check out the below, a great post called “We Are the Champions?!” written by Crispydoc (Dr. David Presser) on burnout in emergency medicine, a field that towers over the others in burnout statistics:
It’s official: a study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings showed that as of 2014, Emergency Medicine (EM) took the top slot for physician burnout (59%). Suck it, critical care (50%). In your face, OB/GYN (56%). We’re #1, we’re # …huh?
How did my beloved field of EM win the race to nowhere? When I was in medical school, the pioneering faculty insisted that EM’s reputation for early burnout was based on the fact that those docs who’d burnt out had trained in another field, couldn’t hack it in their chosen specialties, and ended up woefully underprepared to spend their careers in EM. As a medical student, I saw EM transform from Rodney Dangerfield disrespected to George Clooney sexy. A full 13% of my class at UCSF matched in EM. We smugly believed we knew what we were getting into, and we took for granted our ability to work as lifers.
