The only job harder than being a doctor—so the data tells us—is being an emergency-room nurse, which comes with higher levels of burnout and depression and (at 19 percent) almost twice the level of PTSD seen in combat veterans.
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According to a recent report from the Mayo Clinic, 52 percent of physicians report being burned out, and their incidence of PTSD is 15 percent, four times the levels in the regular workforce and three percentage points higher than the levels found in veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These sky-high stress levels inevitably have quantifiable and negative effects on both patient care and physician well-being. The Mayo Clinic found not only that a 1 percent increase in measured burnout led to a 20 to 30 percent decrease in patient satisfaction but, more worryingly still, that 15 percent of all doctors have issues with substance abuse during their careers, and that their rates of depression and suicide are twice the national levels.
Those who reported that they spent at least 20 percent of their time doing things they loved had dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20 percent level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk. Remove the love from a physician’s work, and the work grates, and grates some more, until it hurts.
What we all wrestle with every day in the real world is not so much work and life as it is love and loathe.
In Britain, the Health and Safety Executive reported in 2018 that close to 15 million work days were lost as a result of workplace-related stress, depression, and anxiety, and that among a total workforce of 26.5 million, nearly 600,000 individuals self-reported suffering from work-related mental health issues that year.
2. WHERE DID THE LOVE GO?
“At work, according to the most recent data, less than 16 percent of us are fully engaged, with the rest of us just selling our time and our talent and getting compensated for our trouble. In the worst extremes of always-on, high-stress jobs, such as distribution centers, emergency room nursing, and teaching, incidences of PTSD are higher than they are for veterans returning from war zones. Imagine that. We’ve created work conditions that are so blind to the needs of each human being that they wind up experiencing more soul-destroying distress than soldiers who’ve witnessed the killing and harming of other human beings.