Healing the Healers: Legal Remedies for Physician Burnout

Abstract

A career as a doctor was long considered to be among the best professional paths that one could pursue. But medicine may no longer be the sought-after career that it once was. All too often, doctors, struggling with the demands of electronic health record systems and a myriad of administrative and regulatory responsibilities, find that they fail to derive much joy from their work and become victims of burnout. Physician burnout is an acute concern in the medical community, with forty-four percent of doctors reporting that they suffer from it. Physician burnout is a public health threat. Doctors who are profoundly distressed cannot provide their patients with the highest quality of care.