Burnout and Time Away From Work

For this month’s Wellness Spotlight, I would like to highlight the importance of self-care and discuss how this can be related to time away from work.  

It has been well-established that taking a break from work is associated with better burnout rates, better job performance, and better relationships. Furthermore, there are benefits to cardiovascular mortality and improvements in depression when we take time away from our job.

This past January, JAMA Network Open published a paper titled, “Vacation Days Taken, Work During Vacation, and Burnout Among US Physicians,” in which over 3,000 physicians completed a survey aimed at further understanding the relationship between time away from work and burnout. Just under 20% of subjects reported taking five or fewer days away from work, while around 40% took one to three weeks, and almost 60% reported taking over three weeks. Specifically, for general internal medicine physicians, 29.6% of respondents took less than five days.

What surprised me the most was how bad doctors are at fully “being away” from our jobs. Over 70% of doctors reported doing at least some type of work on a typical vacation day. Notably, 7.4% reported working for over 90 minutes. For general internal medicine physicians, 36.1% spent over 30 minutes on work.

Interestingly, factors strongly associated with lower burnout risk were having full coverage of the EHR inbox and taking over three weeks of vacation. Spending over 30 minutes on work was associated with more burnout. Additionally, 40.7% of physicians report working at least 55 hours per week, while only 9.2% of workers from other fields report so.

Earlier this summer, I was able to spend the final week of my first year of cardiology fellowship visiting my wife in Savannah, Georgia. Additionally, I was able to spend time with my parents-in-law, who were visiting the US from Casablanca, Morocco. One of my favorite experiences was when they cooked beef Kafta, which is a Moroccan recipe consisting of beef meatballs, chopped onions, and what seems like 20+ herbs and spices that they still refuse to give me the exact recipe for. The most relaxing part of the vacation was a day trip to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. This was a beautiful beach and community, and we were able to bring our puppy Ziggy to the beach for the first time.

In summary, I would like to encourage others to acknowledge the importance of self-care and to reiterate the potential benefits. The above article is a good example of how many physicians struggle to escape the work environment, even while on vacation. I think this reflects the servant attitude and dedication to patients that many physicians have, but also remains an area of vast improvement for many. 


Note: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of ACOI.