Burnout A Difficult Symptom
Burnout. It is a first-world word to mean exhaustion from a job and job responsibilities. But more than the first-world connotations, it can have very damaging effects on a human being and their family. It can hurt a person’s ability to earn money, to perform a job correctly. And it a serious epidemic that threatens major professions.
Burnout has many symptoms. A person who has burnout might suffer from depressed mood, an inability to function, anger, frustration, incredible physical exhaustion, trouble concentrating, and other ills. They may take it out on their coworkers with anger outbursts and displays of frustration. They may have lack of motivation, which affects productivity.
Certain professions are more likely to have burnout than others, though there is always a singular cause that affects all people in all industries: working past their point of capacity, overwhelmed with responsibilities, unable to keep up with the pace their job requires, and more.
Burnout can affect all people in all professions. However, there are some statistics that show the level of burnout among people of major professions, those that require long hours and a difficult level of responsibilities. Many of these professions involve caring for other people and making decisions for them. This can cause burnout.
One of these professions is the medical profession. The medical profession requires long hours of its practitioners, with those long hours coming from dealing with patients, making decisions about the health of patients paperwork, research, and more. All of these situations require a great deal of time and a great deal of effort.
The statistics about burnout in that industry are:
- 45.8% of physicians are considered to be experiencing at least one symptom of burnout.
- There is a 35.2% overall burnout rate among U.S. physicians.
- Physicians aged 35 and under have a burnout rate of 44%.
- Medical students report a rate of depression that’s 15% to 30% higher than the general population by a significant margin.
- Studies show that physicians are almost twice as likely as the general U.S. population to report being dissatisfied with their work-life balance.
- Emergency doctors suffer the highest rates of burnout of all medical professionals, with 59% agreeing they felt burned out.
- Female physicians rated themselves higher on the physician burnout scale at 55% compared to male physicians rating themselves at 45%.
- Two-thirds of both men and women say work has a significant impact on their stress level, and one in four has called in sick as a result of work stress.
Those statistics show that mental health and burnout are major issues within the American population. This is possibly due to the culture in America that requires people to work more hours than their job stipulates and the fall of the 40 hour work week or 9 to 5 day. Many Americans are staying later at work, arriving earlier, and working longer.
The burnout within the medical field is fairly normal it would seem. The job requires long hours, with all the different responsibilities associated with it, but there are also financial considerations as well. A medical student goes in a great deal of debt, which requires them to stay in the medical field once they get there.
This is to pay off student loans.
But people in all professions can get burnout, which is simply when their work responsibilities and duration reach over capacity for a person’s ability to work. Although this may happen more in the professions like the medical field, it can also happen for someone working a standard job or someone who is working two jobs.
There are some terms associated with this. They are stress burnout symptoms, workplace stress, workplace anger, symptoms of being overtired, recovery from severe burnout, signs of emotional exhaustion, signs of job burnout, signs of physical exhaustion, job stress, life burnout, managing anger in the workplace, recovery from severe burnout, and more.
Life burnout is a term that seems to mean that a person is burned out on life. And while this can happen in many settings, a person who is burned out with life or suffers from life burnout will probably be burned out with work. Life burnout is a serious symptom as a person might not seek help because they believe all is hopeless.
There are means of getting out of burnout, whether in life or work. Finding the right support can help.