The hardest part about medicine right now isn't the medicine

New data (2025) from Medscape continues to show burnout is as pervasive as ever among physicians: 29% of physicians report feeling burned out, while 6% feel depressed, and 18% report feeling both. ^[]

“It does not surprise me, unfortunately,” says Becky N. Lowry, MD, FACP, chief wellness officer at The University of Kansas Health System. 

Over the last decade, there's been increased awareness of the emotional strain experienced by physicians, nurses, and healthcare workers, explains Dr. Lowry, who is also the medical director at The University of Kansas Cancer Center Survivorship Transition Clinic.

“It has unfortunately contributed to an increase in physicians and other healthcare workers leaving their roles [and] has negatively impacted our existing shortages in physicians, nurses, and caregivers," she says.

The pervasiveness of burnout

The Medscape report surveyed more than 5,700 physicians working across 29 specialties for roughly three months last year. ^[]

“Dealing with physician burnout has been something that we've been addressing … for quite some time,” says David Cutler, MD, board-certified family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. "But it's a struggle when you're working against insurance companies and large corporations which run medical practices, [and] for whom the primary focus may not be the health of the physician, but the profitability of their enterprise.”

The importance of well-being as a physician

It’s essential that physicians take steps to look after their own health before attending to their patients, adds Dr. Cutler.

“You really have to put on your own oxygen mask first,” he says. “It's like when you're on an airplane and there's an emergency and your oxygen masks drop down. You can't go around helping other people until you put that oxygen mask on and you've assured your own safety.”

Physicians have to make sure that they themselves are getting adequately nourished and are getting exercised and are getting enough sleep—that they themselves are healthy before they can start taking care of other people, he adds.

“Awareness and prevention are important in stress management just as in other health and medical concerns,” she says. “Setting boundaries to take care of yourself is important for your own personal well-being and also reflects a commitment to providing your best care for your patients. Learning to distinguish between hard work and competitive exhaustion is important. The latter is not a strategy for professional sustainability.”