Massachusetts doctors are experiencing burnout at higher rates since COVID-19 overwhelmed their medical practices and hospitals, new research has found.
Eight researchers published the study Friday in JAMA Network Open. They surveyed 1,373 physicians in the state three times in 2017, 2019 and 2021.
They found the share of doctors reporting “high burnout” scores on a standardized questionnaire in two of three areas — exhaustion, cynicism and reduced personal efficiency — fell from 44.4% (610 physicians) in 2017 to 41.9% (575) in 2019, before the pandemic. But it boomeranged to 50.4% (692 of the same doctors) in 2021, a year after the first COVID cases hit the U.S. medical system.
“We found increasing burnout during the pandemic,” the researchers wrote. “Pandemic-related uncertainties have also taken an emotional and physical toll at the personal level and affected the labor force scarcity.”
The study confirmed the findings of more limited surveys of COVID-related burnout by following the same group of doctors over five years, they noted.
According to the study, “the COVID-19 pandemic has had profound implications for the physician workforce nationwide” that have outlasted the end of public health restrictions.
Researchers pointed to an earlier study that showed that 3 in 4 physicians felt overworked and half considered changing careers during the pandemic.
The study blamed increasing burnout levels on poor work-life balance, higher workloads and a plummeting sense of autonomy among doctors.
Researchers asked the physicians about their satisfaction with their careers and compensation, leadership and diversity issues, personal well-being and administrative workloads.
“Physicians with burnout are more likely to make medical errors, have lower patient satisfaction scores, and have higher rates of absenteeism,” the researchers noted.
These findings suggest the need for “urgent solutions,” they said.
Researchers emphasized that the study associated lower burnout levels with financial contentment and with physicians who “spent less time on administrative tasks, pointing to increased job satisfaction with less bureaucracy.”
The study comes as multiple reports have shown widespread discontent among health workers in the wake of the pandemic.
Early retirements, absenteeism and resignations during the pandemic created staff shortages that left providers working longer hours with more patients and less support staff.
In April, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing reported that 100,000 nurses quit during COVID. Another 800,000 nurses, or 1 in 5 of those the council surveyed, planned to leave the profession by 2027.
In the study published Friday, researchers said they examined a “relatively well distributed” mix of doctors with different experience levels. The largest share, 34.8%, reported between 11 and 20 years in medical practice.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.