Physician burnout and stress — already a known problem in the health care community — has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and is adding an additional layer to the physician shortage dilemma.
said that the deficit will get much worse — with a projected shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary care and specialty care.
“Because people are burnt out, many may be considering working less, so it definitely feeds the workforce shortage. And if we end up with fewer physicians working and access being even more of a problem, then those that are left working are faced with even heavier clinical burdens in terms of taking care of all of their patients, so that leaves them more burned out,” Resneck said.
A health care worker sits by the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York early in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Michael Dill, the Association of American Medical Colleges director of workforce studies, told Yahoo News that he believes a growing physician shortage is contributing to more burnout, but burnout doesn’t appear to be deterring more people from joining the profession.
A major obstacle to training more physicians that Dill and Resneck both point to is a 1997 cap on the number of Medicare-funded residency programs in the U.S., which has created a bottleneck of qualified medical students with not enough training positions.
But Resneck also said that there are holes in other specialities, too, and that geographically there are no areas that have been spared from shortages. Medical staff stand outside NYU Langone Health hospital as people applaud to show their gratitude to essential workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A solution to physician and health care shortages in the U.S. needs to consider both the input and output of workers, Resneck said. Training more doctors is important, but the U.S. also needs to curb the number of physicians leaving the workforce — and burnout is a major contributor to that.
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