How to tell if your doctor is burned out

Originally published on Nov. 11, 2017.

Psychiatrist Mamta Gautam is known as the "doctor's doctor"because she works almost exclusively with physicians who are facing emotional turmoil.

It's a busy practice:surveys show that half of Canadian physicians reportsome level of mental distress due to their jobs.

According to Dr. Gautam, physicians often wait too long to seek treatment.

She advises people in stressful jobs to make themselves aware of the stages of burnout so they can seek treatment earlier.

Susceptible to burnout

Gautam says there are three stage of burnout.

Gautumsaysphysicians are particularly susceptible to burnout because of the high stakes of their profession.

Many makelife or death decisions daily. Further, physicians tend to have personality traits that canmake them prone to burnout; theyare highly conscientious,responsible, caring and compassionate.

There arealso the challenges of providing care in an environment of continued cutbacks, with growing demands frommore complex patients, adds Gautum.

To fix the issue, Dr. Gautambelieves that there needs to be a fundamental change in the culture of medicine. She says health-care institutions need to better support their doctors andhelp them prevent stress before it leads to burnout.

Update:

This episode featured a reference to a "viral video" that was filmed at a Gainesville, Fla., clinic last month.A patient's daughterfilmed an altercation with a doctor, who lost his temper with the patient.

We aired a portion of audio from the video to open up the discussion about what contribute to "doctor burnout." The clinic has released a statement explaining what happened from itspoint of view. You can read the statementhere.