Study Shows Burnout Increased Among Healthcare Workers During Height of Pandemic, Now Decreasing

A new study paints a picture of burnout and professional stress among healthcare workers from 2018 to 2023. CIDRAP has the news.

The number of participants ranged year over year between about 120,000 and 170,000 healthcare workers (HCWs). Burnout rates rose from around 30% in 2018 to nearly 40% in 2022 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, before decreasing back down to around 35% in 2023.

Primary care physicians “reported the greatest burnout,” and burnout levels rose by at least 10% for “dentists (from 26.7% to 41.7%), psychologists (from 34.1% to 47.6%), dietitians (from 26.3% to 38.6%), and optometrists (from 36.9% to 46.7%).” Burnout increased “in all service areas between 2018 and 2021, with the largest jumps in dental (from 30.7% to to 39.6%), mental health (from 30.4% to 38.2%), and rehabilitation (from 27.1% to 34.1%). But in 2022 and 2023, all service areas experienced a decrease in burnout, with the greatest reductions in emergency medicine (from 43.3% to 35.2%), laboratory and pathology medicine (from 46.6% to 39.0%), intensive care (from 39.7% to 32.5%), and acute care (from 44.5% to 37.3%).”

Curiously, “all service areas saw a decline in professional stress from 2020 to 2023, with optometry (16.3%), administration (14.1%), emergency medicine (13.2%), and ICU (12.9%) having the largest decreases.” The authors theorize that burnout increasing and professional stress declining “may be due to the initial set of shocks and uncertainty followed by greater stabilization that led to pandemic-related stress to decrease.”