Plastic surgeons top list of physicians ranked by happiness
The numbers are a bright spot as physicians across all specialties are still struggling with high rates of burnout.
Photo:: Luis Alvarez/Getty Images
How happy are physicians? It varies according to specialty, a new Medscape report has found, with plastic surgeons apparently the most content in and out of work.
Seventy-one percent of plastic surgeons reported they were happy, with public health and preventive medicine physicians coming in a close second at 69%. They topped a list of 29 specialties that were ranked based on polling conducted between June and October 2022.
Infectious disease specialists ranked the lowest – at 47% they were the only specialty in which less than half of respondents reported they were happy. This is likely due to the persistent and ongoing stressors of caring for COVID-19 patients through the pandemic and beyond.
In between those two extremes were orthopedics and otolaryngology, both ranking at 65%, and urology and physical medicine and rehabilitation, both at 63%.
Ophthalmology, dermatology, pathology and gastroenterology all logged happiness rates of 62%. Radiology and pediatrics rounded out the specialities that ranked at or above 60%, at 61 and 60%, respectively.
The other speciality rankings are general surgery (59%); pulmonary medicine (59%); nephrology (58%); diabetes and endocrinology (58%); psychiatry (58%); anesthesiology (58%); obstetrics/gynecology (57%); internal medicine (57%); family medicine (56%); cardiology (56%); emergency medicine (55%); critical care (55%); allergy and immunology (55%); neurology (54%); oncology (51%); and rheumatology (51%).
WHAT'S THE IMPACT
The numbers are a bright spot as physicians across all specialties are still struggling with high rates of burnout. Based on surveys of more than 20,000 U.S.-based physicians, data published in JAMA Health forum in November showed overall burnout rates at 49% over a three-year window.
Burnout was 45% in 2019 and declined through the year. There was a brief rise in early 2020 followed by a decrease during the early phases of the pandemic (40%-45%). Burnout increased toward the end of 2020 (50%), generally worsened throughout 2021, and showed a steep rise to the highest levels ever recorded by the fourth quarter of 2021 – about 60%.
But while burnout rates increased, the increase was lower if clinicians felt a sense of teamwork or being valued. In the fourth quarter of 2021, for example, burnout was 37% when feeling valued, compared with 69% when not.
Similar results were found when examining work environments, with lower burnout in calmer environments compared with chaotic environments (36% versus 78%), and for those experiencing good teamwork as opposed to poor teamwork (49% versus 88%). Importantly, teamwork burnout curves show modest improvement with good teamwork, but substantially higher burnout when teamwork is poor.
THE LARGER TREND
With a projected shortage of nearly 140,000 physicians by 2033, and a shortage of 3 million lower-wage healthcare workers in the next five years, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm on the country's ongoing healthcare burnout crisis in May 2022.
Health workers – including physicians, nurses, community and public health workers, and nurse aides – have long faced systemic challenges in the healthcare system, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. That, according to Murthy, is leading to crisis levels of burnout.
The pandemic, of course, only made things worse, prompting Murthy to issue an advisory for addressing health worker burnout that includes recommendations, such as reducing administrative burdens, being more responsible to workers' needs, and eliminating punitive policies for seeking mental health and substance use disorder care.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: Jeff.Lagasse@himssmedia.com
