Which Medical Specialties Are the Most Burned Out?

By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content Director

One of our big goals at The White Coat Investor is to prevent physicians and other high-income professionals from becoming burned out. If you suffer from burnout and leave the job you spent so long training for, you lose the ability to earn a high salary, to save tons of money, to invest a high percentage of your earnings, and to retire to a life you want to live.

Recognizing the signs of burnout is important, and taking steps to prevent it from happening to you (either through financial planning, diversifying your income, or attending WCICON25 to breathe in all the wellness content and activities) is key to keeping yourself on a financially fruitful path.

And it probably would be helpful to know what medical specialties tend to suffer from burnout the most.

According to the 2024 Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report, 63% of emergency medicine doctors have felt burned out—the most of any specialty—and they’re followed by OB-GYNs (53%), oncologists (53%), and pediatricians (51%).

“It’s interesting to me that these are all front-line specialties, delivering primary care either predominantly or frequently,” Dr. Lisa MacLean, the chief clinical wellness officer with Henry Ford System in Detroit, said, via Medscape.

In the 2023 Medscape survey, EM was at 65%, internal medicine at 60%, and pediatrics at 59%. The fact that all those numbers declined for 2024 is a positive sign, and it’s also good news that, in the 2024 survey, 49% of total doctors said they felt burned out compared to 53% in 2023.

The pandemic-induced burnout signs seem to have declined, but Dr. Heather Farley also noted that “the pandemic-related stressors have been replaced by new and exacerbated stressors in the form of financial pressures, which have many health systems making fewer people do more.”

Female doctors continue to report burnout at higher rates than male doctors. In 2024, 56% of female doctors said they felt burnout symptoms (down from 63% the year before), while 44% of male doctors reported the same (down from 46% in 2023). Some of the reasons women report higher rates of burnout than men, according to Farley, are differences in pay, different levels of resources, fewer women in leadership positions that can advocate for them, and more challenges to work-life balance because of childcare responsibilities.

“It’s not easy to close that gap,” she said. “We have much work to do.”

And it’s not as if these burnout symptoms come and go in a timely manner. Twenty percent of doctors said their burnout has lasted between 7-12 months, 29% said between 13 months and 24 months, and 42% said longer than two years. Meanwhile, 16% of women and 14% of men said their burnout symptoms were so severe that they were considering leaving medicine altogether.

The No. 1 reason physicians said they were burned out: bureaucracy.

Perhaps the biggest question, though, is how can physicians cope with burnout and perhaps soothe their wounds in a healthy way. While a tiny minority of survey respondents say they use marijuana, nicotine, and prescription drugs to cope, 33% say they eat junk food, 24% drink alcohol, and 21% binge eat. In more positive news, 52% say they exercise, while 49% report talking with friends and family.

As WCI columnist Julie Alonso wrote in a recent column on Strengthening Your Mental Health:

“There are no shortcuts to supporting your well-being. It’s an ongoing process across a lifetime that requires continued attention . . . In my clinical work, I do a lot of lifestyle counseling and short-term goal-setting with patients, and I have seen it pay off. I also try my hardest to practice what I preach. I know there are no workarounds to getting enough sleep, eating a wholesome and nutrient-rich diet, doing regular physical activity, and getting enough social engagement. It’s even better when I can combine more than one of these areas.”

It seems, though, that getting professional help might be a step too far for some. While 26% of those suffering from burnout or depression said they had or would seek it out, a whopping 53% said they hadn’t gotten professional help in the past and wouldn’t in the future.

As WCI founder Dr. Jim Dahle has written in the past, “Burnout is your greatest financial risk.” While the numbers in the Medscape burnout survey are moving in a positive direction, the burnout pandemic among physicians doesn’t seem likely to fade away anytime soon.

More information here:

How My Burnout Led to Rage That Could’ve Ended My Career

What Are the Most (and Least) Stressful Medical Specialties?

Understanding Veterinarian Burnout and Mental Health

Money Song of the Week

This week, we have a reader suggestion from commenter Talon, who writes this about Faster Horses (The Cowboy and the Poet) by Tom T. Hall: “It’s a clever, albeit nihilistic song about money with some classic country twang.”

I’d never heard the 1975 tune, and I didn’t know anything about Tom T. Hall, who was one of the most popular country artists in the 1970s. The song follows a discussion between a cowboy and a poet. The poet is idealistic and probably a little naive. The cowboy is cynical and probably a little mean. The cowboy says life is all about whiskey, women, and money (not unlike what the Grackles sang about in Tonight’s My Night to Howl). The poet says he doesn’t care about any of that.

That doesn’t sit well with the cowboy. As Hall sings,

“I told him I was a poet, I was lookin' for the truth/I do not care for horses, whiskey, women or the loot/I said I was a writer, my soul was all on fire/He looked at me and he said, ‘You are a liar.’”

After the cowboy kisses the poet’s head with “somethin’ cold and shiny,” though, the poet begins to better understand the cowboy’s point.

Hall, who died in 2021, is beloved by the country and western music community, and people cite his storytelling as one of his greatest attributes. But he said he was always careful not to cast aspersions on the characters he sang about, about what they wanted, or about what they felt were the most important things in life.

“I never made judgments in my songs,” Hall told NPR, via Country Reunion Music. “I had a lot of good characters, a lot of bad characters. But I never bragged on the good guys and I never condemned the losers.”

Whether drinking whiskey and prowling for money makes you a good guy or a loser is up for interpretation, I suppose.

More information here:

Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published

Instagram Reel of the Week

No matter what you think about credit card rewards and travel hacking, there's one thing that is for sure: playing AC/DC on your social media is always a winning move.

Do you think the burnout problem can get better for physicians (or can even be resolved)? How have you dealt with burnout? What else can doctors do?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at content@whitecoatinvestor.com.]

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