Physician specialties with the most—and the least—burnout

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From the 2013 Medscape survey on physician burnout, here is a sampling of the highest and lowest physician burnout rates by specialty:

Highest rate of physician burnout:

Emergency medicine (51%)
Critical care (50%)
Family medicine (43%)

Lowest rate of physician burnout:

Pathology (32%)
Psychiatry (33%)
(Tied)
- Ophthalmology (35%)
- Pediatrics (35%)
- Rheumatology (35%)

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PULSE has demonstrated a commitment to DEI projects and research. Here are a few of our efforts. PULSE created the “University of Ottawa (Canada) Diversity, Equality, and Inclusivity Survey” for their Faculty of Medicine. PULSE distributed over 6000 surveys to faculty, residents, medical students, graduate students, and support staff to understand the extent to which gender, race or ethnicity, culture or religion, sexual orientation, disability status and age relate to: teamwork, harassment, discrimination, feeling valued, civility, and promoting diversity, equitability, and inclusion. In collaboration with several large academic medical centers, PULSE has begun a study to determine whether PULSE 360 feedback provided to members of perioperative teams is affected by the member’s gender, ethnicity, age, etc. The findings as of early 2023 show no significant differences associated with demographic group membership. From the Harvard-affiliated hospitals to a large West Coast academic medical center, PULSE has either modified existing survey questions or added many additional questions to assess DEI-related concerns for individuals receiving feedback from their team members in the practice groups, clinics, departments. PULSE 360 surveys were analyzed for physicians for whom PULSE had various demographics. No significant differences were found for: gender, age, country of medical training, or native language. (Assessing Physician Performance Using 360-degree Multisource Surveys: Do Biases Exist Due to Gender, Country of Training, Native Language, and Age? Julie J Lanz, Paul Gregory, Larry Harmon; Diversity and Equality in Health and Care [2021] 18[9]: 451-456).