(Published 3/9/19, updated 6/13/25)
The Truth About Physician Burnout: More Than Just Stress
The term physician burnout is now everywhere—from medical journals to hospital memos—but what does it really mean? Burnout describes a state of chronic work-related stress that leads to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a decline in job satisfaction. In the medical field, it’s become a default diagnosis for the widespread suffering of doctors, medical students, and other clinicians.
But here’s the problem: labeling this crisis as “burnout” minimizes the truth. Behind the buzzword lies a deeper story—one of physician depression, physician PTSD, and even doctor suicide, often stemming from relentless overwork, bullying, and institutional betrayal. More than half of U.S. doctors report symptoms of burnout, yet few receive the confidential mental health support they need due to fear of professional consequences.
This article uncovers what lies beneath the burnout narrative: a pattern of systemic abuse and human rights violations in medicine. It’s time to stop blaming doctors for their distress and start holding institutions accountable.
Since 2015, I’ve advised doctors to stop using the word “burnout.” Here’s why.
Each year our best and brightest, most compassionate students enter medicine—a career with the highest suicide rate of any profession. Each year more than 1 million Americans lose their doctors to suicide. Jumping from hospital rooftops. Found hanging in hospital chapels.
Classic response? Blame the victim, then cover up the suicide with medicine’s favorite victim-blaming buzzword—burnout—a slang word from the 1970s for end-stage drug addiction—now weirdly applied to doctors! Here’s how it works . . .
Physician “burnout” blames the victim NOT the medical system that actually kills doctors—and patients! Plus it’s a cash cow for physician predators and profiteers—all the burnout coaches cannibalizing the corpses of their colleagues—divided and conquered by bullying, hazing, and sleep deprivation—the foundation of medical training that forces new med school grads to legally work 28-hour shifts treating heart attacks, gunshot victims, and delivering stillborns—with no debriefing for their trauma. No bathroom breaks. No time to eat, surgeons collapse from dehydration and hypoglycemia. Here’s a doc found sleeping on an elderly comatose woman while starting her IV. (All true stories) An ICU doc forced to keep working during a seizure. Another doctor working while miscarrying her baby. Read more ›
